PAULINE  FORE  MOFFITT 
LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
GENERAL  LIBRARY,  BERKELEY 


/o 


AVOWALS 


1250  copies  of  this  book  have  been  printed 
of  which  this  is  number. 


ftfi 


AVOWALS 


BY 

GEORGE    MOORE 


NEW  YORK 
PRIVATELY  PRINTED  FOR  SUBSCRIBERS  ONLY  BY 

BONI      AND      LIVERIGHT 

1919 


Copyright,  1919,  by 
GEORGE  MOORE 

All  rights  reserved 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


AVOWALS 


AVOWALS 


CHAPTER  1. 

MAID.  Mr  Edmund  Gosse. 
Moore.  My  dear  Gosse,  how  glad  I  am  to  see  you, 
and  how  well  timed  your  visit  is,  you  will  acknowledge 
when  I  tell  you  that  five  minutes  before  the  door  opened 
I  left  my  writings — you  see  them  all  scattered  over  the 
table — and  came  to  this  fire  (which,  by  the  way,  isn't 
wanted  on  a  day  like  this)  to  dream  of — whom  do  you 
think? — of  you,  of  course,  and  that  two  human  beings 
so  different  as  ourselves  should  have  been  friends  for 
forty  years.     It  must  be  nearly  as  long  as  that. 

Gosse.  Differences  in  temperament  draw  men  together. 

Are  we  not  formed  as  notes  of  music  are 
For  one  another  though  dissimilar  ? 

A  late  spring  fire  is  responsible  for  many  dreams;  but  I 
should  have  preferred  to  hear  that  it  had  set  you  think- 
ing of  the  art  that  has  united  us,  rather  than  of  super- 
ficial differences  that  failed  to  divide  us.  With  you  it 
has  been  as  with  me,  not  a  day  passing  these  forty  years 
without  our  meditating  on  the  mystery  of  our  art.     But 

I  will  not  delay.     I  merely  came 

Moore.  You  must  not  go.  This  visit  is  most  oppor- 
tune. I've  been  trying  to  write  this  afternoon  and  for 
many  previous  afternoons  for  the  last  fortnight,  begin- 
ning the  same  thing  over  and  over  again  and  again  and 
starting  afresh.  It  was  my  literary  perplexities,  teasing 
difficulties,  that  set  me  dreaming  of  you,  sitting  pen  in 
hand,  your  eyes  fixed  on  a  clear  vision,  transcribing  it 
from  time  to  time  accurately  and  harmoniously,  sentence 

3 


4  AVOWALS 

rising  out  of  sentence,  paragraph  out  of  paragraph.  Have 
I  not  seen  your  manuscript,  only  a  word  altered  here  and 
there? 

Gosse.  But  if  I  do  not  change  on  paper,  I  change  in 
my  mind.  I  sit  pen  in  hand  until  the  sentence  is  com- 
pletely formed,  and  any  quality  that  my  prose  may  have 
it  gets  from  the  pen.     If  I  were  to  dictate  as  you  do 

Moore.  My  dictation  is  the  cartoon,  and  the  quality, 
as  you  call  it,  and  rightly  comes  when  I  begin  to  lick  the 
sentences  together. 

Gosse.  I  couldn't  write  that  way. 

Moore.  To  me  it  is  incredible  that  a  man  should  be 
able  to  arrange  his  composition  beforehand  and  execute 
it  sentence  by  sentence.  Your  method  reminds  me  of 
painting  as  it  was  done  in  Paris  in  the  seventies,  piece  by 
piece,  leaving  off  in  the  middle  of  an  eye,  and  finishing 
the  second  half  the  next  day.  The  painter's  task,  though 
difficult,  was  accomplished  upon  a  drawing,  but  you  are 
always,  if  I  may  so  express  myself,  in  mid-air,  finding 
your  way  like  the  swallow.  You  find  it,  it  is  true,  and  I 
believe  you  to  be  without  chart  or  compass  since  you 
say  it.  I  believe,  as  the  pious  Christian  believes,  because 
it  is  incredible. 

Gosse.  I  hold  the  road  in  my  mind's  eye. 

Moore.  But  the  mind's  eye  cannot  carry  the  various 
aspects  of  the  road  and  the  multiple  incidents  of  the 
road.  But  why  do  I  say  cannot?  My  own  mind  alone 
is  known  to  me,  and  every  time  I  begin  a  fresh  subject 
it  seems  as  if  I  should  never  succeed  in  unravelling  it. 
Our  minds  are  as  different  as  our  lives  have  been.  You 
married  early  in  life,  and  a  gulf  divides  the  man  that 
marries  in  the  beginning  from  the  man  who  decides  in 
the  beginning  that  he  will  remain  a  bachelor.  Your 
life  has  been  spent  in  your  own  home  among  your  family 
and  in  clubs.  You  look  at  this  moment  as  if  you  had 
come  from  your  club.     You  were  educated,  and  you  know 


AVOWALS  5 

literature,  Greek  and  Roman,  French,  German,  besides  a 
good  smattering  of  Scandinavian.  No  lives  were  ever  so 
different  as  ours,  nor  temperaments.  It  never  happened 
to  you  to  rush  out  after  dinner  to  see  a  friend,  or  even 
to  desire  to  do  such  a  thing.  Never  have  I  known  you 
to  pay  a  casual  visit  before  to-day. 

Gosse.  My  wife  begged  of  me 

Moore.  It  was  not  then  a  desire  to  see  an  old  friend 
that  compelled  you  from  the  Athenseum,  that  august 
abode  of  prelacy  and  literature.  I  am  disappointed.  I 
can  see  you  coming  through  the  portals  with  his  Grace, 
noticing,  as  soon  as  you  are  in  the  air,  that  an  acid  little 
wind  is  blowing  through  the  sunshine.  You  finger  the 
lappet  of  his  lordship's  overcoat,  saying:  Rather  thin  for 
the  season,  and,  having  deposited  his  Grace  in  his  car- 
riage and  waited  till  the  rug  was  tucked  about  the  epis- 
copal breeches,  you  hailed  a  hansom.  Did  you  not  feel 
yourself  to  be  somewhat  of  a  hypocrite  when  you  called 
out — you  didn't  dare  to  call  out:  121  Ebury  Street, 
within  hearing  of  his  Grace's  coachman?  You  lowered 
your  voice  as  a  man  does  on  his  way 

Gosse.  I  cannot  allow  you  to  indulge  your  imagination 
any  longer,  though  it  is  all  very  amusing.  I  must  beg 
you  to  receive  without  delay  my  wife's  message.  We 
have  some  distinguished  visitors  coming  to  see  us  on 
Sunday,  and  she  will  find  it  hard  to  forgive  you  if  you  do 
not  help  us  to  entertain  them.     Among  them  are 

Moore.  A  Scandinavian  critic  and  a  Danish  poet 


Goose.  I  will  not  stay  to  hear  you  talk  nonsense  any 
longer  about  the  nationalities  of  our  visitors,  which  do 
not  concern  you  at  all,  and  I'll  go  so  far  as  to  say  that 
your  remarks  make  me  regret  that  I  broke  through  my 
usual  custom  of  communicating  by  letter  rather  than  by 
word  of  mouth.  For  it  is,  as  you  say,  not  my  custom  to 
call  without  an  appointment,  and  what  has  happened 
to-day  will  not  encourage  me  to  repeat  my  experiment. 


6  AVOWALS 

Moore.  I'm  sorry  indeed  if  my  reckless  imagination 
is  to  deprive  me  of  your  company  this  afternoon,  for 
never  in  my  life  did  I  need  it  more.  Literature  needs 
your  help,  as  you  will  see  if  you  will  forgive  your  volatile 
friend  his  levity,  which,  though  incurable,  is  harmless.  I 
beg  of  you  to  return  to  your  chair,  for  I  cannot  talk  to 
you  if  you  stand  irate  on  the  hearthrug  fuming.  Can  I 
do  more  than  apologize  for  having  allowed  my  imagina- 
tion to  wander  about  the  portals  of  the  Athenaeum? 

Gosse.  But  I  don't  belong  to  that  club. 

Moore.  Then  why  be  angry;  it  is  only  reasonable  to 
be  angry  at  the  truth.  I  shall  be  glad  to  entertain  your 
friends  to  the  best  of  my  ability  whatever  their  nation- 
alities, if 

Gosse.  You  make  my  wife's  request  conditional? 

Moore.  I  beseech  you  not  to  be  so  prickly.  I  make 
no  conditions.  I'll  come  next  Sunday  to  tea  even  though 
I  cannot  persuade  you  to  stay  to  help  me.  Only  this  do 
I  ask,  that  you  will  allow  me  to  tell  you  that  the  subject 
I  have  been  trying  to  write  for  the  last  fortnight  arose 
out  of  one  of  the  subtlest  of  your  critical  remarks,  for  me 
the  most  significant  single  sentence  you  ever  wrote,  or 
that  any  man  wrote,  a  sentence  that  captured  and  held 
me  ever  since,  driving  me  at  last  to  the  creation  of  the 
idea,  an  essay.  Half-an-hour  of  your  time  is  all  I  ask  for, 
and  your  own  thought  having  caused  the  need  you  can 
hardly  refuse  me  half-an-hour  of  your  time.  Our  art 
calls  to  you. 

Gosse.  You  have  certainly  set  me  wondering  what  was 
the  epigram,  maxim,  aphorism,  apophthegm,  or  truism 
that  has  caused  all  the  trouble  with  which  I  see  the 
dining-room  table  littered. 

Moore.  You  wrote,  but  when  you  wrote  the  sentence 
that  captured  my  imagination  I  cannot  tell  you — it  must 
have  been  in  some  essay  or  preface;  a  casual  remark  you 
seemed  to  consider  it,  for  you  did  not  develop  the  thought; 


AVOWALS  7 

I  wish  you  had,  for  had  you  done  so  you  might  have 
removed  some  of  the  errors  with  which  literary  criticism 
is  beset;  but  no,  you  just  said,  as  if  the  remark  was  of 
no  particular  importance,  that  English  genius  had  gone 
into  poetry.  And  it  was  this  remark  thrown  out  casually 
that  fired  my  imagination.  A  seemingly  unending  per- 
spective opened  up  before  me. 

Germany,  I  said,  expresses  herself  in  music;  France 
and  Italy  in  the  plastic  arts;  England,  as  Gosse  says,  in 
poetry.  Our  poetical  literature  is  the  most  beautiful, 
but  outside  of  poetry  English  genius  has  accomplished 
little  or  nothing. 

Gosse.  You  wouldn't  go  so  far  as  to  say  that  English 
genius  has  accomplished  nothing  in  prose. 

Moore.  English  genius  has  certainly  found  abundant 
expression  in  the  essay.  Landor,  Pater,  De  Quincey, 
Lamb.  You  know  how  I  have  yielded  to  these  writers, 
and  yourself  has  demurred  on  more  than  one  occasion  to 
my  unorthodox  faith  that  more  human  souls  rise  out  of 
Landor's  Imaginary  Conversations  than  out  of  Shakes- 
peare's plays.  Our  conversation  became  strained  as  the 
conversation  frequently  became  between  Bishop  Parker 
and  Andrew  Marvel.  You  remember  the  extraordinary 
inrush  of  character  at  the  words :  I  shudder.  At  these  the 
Bishop  rises  into  our  consciousness,  a  spiritual  entity;  in 
all  Shakespeare  is  there  anything  so  swift  and  telling? 
But  we  must  keep  to  the  subject  of  this  discussion,  that 
English  prose  narrative  is  the  weakest  part  of  our  litera- 
ture. 

Gosse.  With  the  exception  of  one  or  two  masterpieces. 

Moore.  I  cannot  allow  that  there  are  any  masterpieces 
in  English  prose  narrative,  for  masterpieces  are  written 
only  by  first-rate  minds,  and  I  think  you  will  agree  with 
me  that  only  the  inferior  or — shall  we  say? — the  subaltern 
mind  has  attempted  prose  narrative  in  England. 

Gosse.  If  we  waive  the  smaller  prose  narratives  of 


8  AVOWALS 

Elizabethan  times,  we  come  upon  a  very  remarkable 
narrative,  Robinson  Crusoe.  But  I  see  your  point.  Defoe 
sold  his  pen  willingly  to  whosoever  could  afford  to  pay 
for  the  writing  of  political  pamphlets,  lampoons,  scurrilous 
novels,  literary  garbage  of  all  kinds;  but  you  must  re- 
member that  a  man  ceases  to  be  a  hack  writer  as  soon 
as  he  writes  a  masterpiece. 

Moore.  I  had  not  intended  to  speak  of  Defoe.  Field- 
ing seemed  to  give  my  essay  a  better  start,  for  in  Tom 
Jones  we  find  the  family,  and  in  the  drawing-room  for  the 
first  time.  Defoe  was,  as  you  say,  a  hack  writer,  and  the 
theme  of  my  essay  is  that  inferior  writers  seized  upon 
English  prose  narrative  as  a  means  of  getting  money; 
and  the  fact  that  Defoe  was  inspired  during  the  first  half 
of  Robinson  Crusoe  does  not  impugn  or  cast  a  doubt  on 
the  validity  of  my  theme.  If  he'd  been  inspired  from 
start  to  finish,  the  matter  would  be  different.  English 
fiction  never  finishes  gallantly;  the  writers  swerve  across 
the  course  or  bolt  out  of  it,  or  stick  out  their  toes,  turn 
it  up,  as  the  phrase  goes.  Forgive  this  description  in 
racing  parlance.  English  fiction  is  a  hackney;  French 
and  Russian  narrative  shows  more  breeding.  This  can 
hardly  be  denied. 

Gosse.  I  certainly  do  not  deny  it. 

Moore.  It  would  seem,  then,  that  my  essay  must 
begin  with  Defoe;  not  with  Defoe,  but  with  Defoe's  last 
word,  Robinson  Crusoe,  the  most  English  of  all  books. 
We  are  islanders,  Crusoe  was  one.  Our  business  is  the 
sea.  Crusoe  was  constantly  occupied  going  to  and  fro 
from  a  wreck.  We  are  a  prosaic  people,  what  the  French 
would  call  terre  &  terre.  Nobody  was  more  terre  d  terre 
than  Crusoe.  England  seems  to  have  expressed  herself  in 
her  first  narrative  uncommonly  well.  You  see,  my  dear 
Gosse,  that  this  conversation  is  already  beginning  to  bear 
fruit.  It  must  be  fifty  years  since  I  read  Robinson  Crusoe, 
but  the  construction  from  the  first  part  of  the  story  is  so 


AVOWALS  9 

regular  that  it  seems  to  me  as  if  I  could  read  the  book 
in  memory.  The  going  back  and  forth  on  a  raft  to  get 
food;  the  finding  of  the  fowling-pieces  and  cordials. 
How  often  did  he  mention  that  he  had  discovered  a 
case  of  cordials?  I  used  to  wonder  what  cordials  were, 
and  why  he  attached  so  much  importance  to  the  finding 
of  them,  for  I  come  of  a  family  that  has  been  sober  for 
many  generations.  It  seems  to  me  that  I  remember  his 
house  and  the  building  of  the  boat,  and  the  current 
that  nearly  carried  him  out  of  sight  of  the  island,  for 
the  boat  could  not  be  steered  out  of  the  current  till  he 
hoisted  a  sail.  It  was  difficult  for  a  child  to  comprehend 
how  a  sail  that  carried  him  more  swiftly  from  the  island 
than  the  current  was  doing  could  at  the  same  time 
enable  him  to  steer  out  of  the  current.  He  was  almost 
out  of  sight  of  the  island  when  he  put  up  the  sail,  and 
it  was  with  a  great  relief  that  I  read  that  the  boat 
answered  the  helm  as  soon  as  her  speed  exceeded  the 
speed  of  the  current.  The  unfortunate  Stevenson  who 
tried  to  write  books  of  adventures  merely  wrote  a 
succession  of  accidents,  but  in  Robinson  Crusoe  every 
incident  is  necessary;  and  every  one  is  shapen  perfectly, 
and  fits  into  its  place;  at  the  right  moment  we  are  told 
that  Crusoe's  powder  and  shot  began  to  run  short,  so, 
instead  of  shooting  the  goats,  he  trapped  them;  the 
wild  goats  became  tame  and  gave  him  milk,  and  from 
the  milk  he  may  have  made  butter  and  cheese;  I've 
forgotten.  But  he  certainly  made  himself  a  suit  of 
clothes  out  of  goat  skins,  and  what  is  wonderful  in  this 
adventure  story  is  the  moral  idea:  man  alone  with 
Nature.  Defoe  may  have  gotten  the  desert  island  from 
Juan  Fernandez,  but  he  got  the  unforgettable  incident, 
the  footprint  on  the  sand,  out  of  his  own  mind,  and  the 
subsequent  discovery  that  cannibals  had  been  on  the 
island  and  indulged  in  a  cannibal  feast.  In  considering 
the  beauty  of  the  subject  that  chance  dropped  in  front 


10  AVOWALS 

of  Defoe  (true  that  it  dropped  in  front  of  many  besides 
Defoe),  it  may  occur  to  us  that  for  full  justice  to  be 
done  to  it  a  man  who  was  at  once  a  poet,  a  philosopher, 
and  a  great  descriptive  writer  was  needed,  but  on  con- 
sideration doubts  will  soon  begin  to  arise  if  this  be  so,  and 
we  begin  to  think  that  perhaps  the  story  gains  by  an 
unaffected  absence  of  the  grand  style.  The  first  part  of 
the  story  could  not  be  improved,  but  the  end  is  a  sad 
spectacle  for  us  men  of  letters — the  uninspired  trying  to 
continue  the  work  of  the  inspired. 

Gosse.  It  is  quite  true  that  very  few  people  continue 
the  book  after  Crusoe  leaves  the  island,  and  your  descrip- 
tion of  the  uninspired  trying  to  continue  the  work  of  the 
inspired  must  be  accepted,  I  think,  as  a  just  criticism  and 
judgment  of  the  book's  end;  and  I  suppose  I  must  allow 
that  if  a  man  fails  to  hold  the  mean  in  his  narrative,  and 
all  the  way,  from  end  to  end,  he  cannot  be  looked  upon  as 
a  genius  of  the  first  rank. 

Moore.  The  man  of  talent  may  be  inspired,  but  the 
moment  of  inspiration  gone  by,  he  writes  like  a  dolt. 

Gosse.  Not  so  a  man  of  genius;  he  always  writes  well ; 
he  never  gives  the  show  away.  But  my  apologies  for  a 
colloquialism  seemingly  necessary  for  the  occasion.  I  see 
you  look  upon  the  end  of  Robinson  Crusoe  as  a  complete 
failure. 

Moore.  An  end  that  nobody  reads  cannot  be  looked 
upon  as  else  than  a  failure,  and  the  true  end  seems  so 
plain  that  I  am  puzzled.  After  the  evangelisation  of 
Friday  I've  forgotten  if  Crusoe  taught  Friday  his  cate- 
chism and  his  prayers;  if  he  didn't,  the  oversight  is  incom- 
prehensible; but  if  we  begin  by  supposing  that  he  did  not 
miss  this  very  English  point,  Crusoe  would  be  moved  to 
consider  his  own  life  in  relation  to  Friday. 

Gosse.     He  did  not  miss  the  evangelisation. 

Moore.  I  am  sincerely  glad  to  hear  it.  After  Friday 
had  been  instructed  in  the  doctrine  of  the  Atonement, 


AVOWALS  11 

the  thought  would  cross  Crusoe's  mind  that  his  life  and 
the  savage's  would  shape  out  into  an  admirable  romance; 
but  he  would  be  deterred  from  writing  the  book  for  a 
long  time,  thinking  that  no  one  would  ever  read  it,  not 
even  Friday. 

Gosse.  Pens  and  ink  and  paper  are  not  available  on 
a  desert  island. 

Moore.    There  was  a  wreck. 

Gosse.  The  wreck  had  gone  to  pieces  long  ago.  True, 
he  might  have  saved  a  good  deal  of  writing  material 
from  the  first  wreck.  But  the  dislike  to  pass  out  of  this 
life  without  leaving  some  record  of  our  passage  through 
it  is  one  entirely  alien  to  the  character  of  Robinson 
Crusoe.  You  would  make  him  into  an  artist.  Defoe 
was  particularly  careful  to  avoid  this  mistake,  for  he 
explains,  as  you  would  have  seen  if  you  had  read  the  end 
of  the  book,  that  Robinson  Crusoe  does  not  write  his 
story  till  he  has  exhausted  all  the  occupations  he  can 
devise.  It  is  not  till  he  has  tied  up  the  last  fruit  tree 
that  he  sits  down  to  write  his  story. 

Moore.  A  time-worn  literary  trick  that  betrays  the 
hack  writer.  Let  us  avail  ourselves,  if  needs  must  be, 
of  it  on  the  island;  and,  accepting  Defoe's  own  subter- 
fuge, I  say  that  the  taming  and  instruction  of  Friday 
being  completed  there  remains  little  daily  work  for  Crusoe. 
Friday  does  the  work,  and,  finding  the  afternoons  a  little 
languid,  Crusoe  begins  to  dream,  and  before  long  his 
dreams  are  of  another  ship  come  to  rescue  his  manu- 
script. Another  ship,  he  says,  will  come  sooner  or  later, 
and  he'd  just  as  lief  be  read  after  his  death  as  before. 
Crusoe  should  die  before  Friday,  for  some  admirable  pages 
might  be  written  on  the  grief  of  the  man  Friday,  inter- 
mingled with  fears  lest  his  kindred  should  return  and  eat 
him,  Friday,  not  Crusoe;  and  Friday,  true  to  his  evan- 
gelisation, would  bury  Crusoe  with  all  the  prayers  he  could 
remember. 


12  AVOWALS 

Gosse.  But  who  would  write  this?  You  cannot  have 
two  pair  of  eyes  on  the  island. 

Moore.  Crusoe  must  not  meet  with  sudden  death, 
rather  an  accident  among  the  cliffs  that  would  allow  him 
to  continue  his  memoirs  from  time  to  time.  I  would  have 
the  last  page  of  the  manuscript  relate  Crusoe's  anxiety 
for  Friday,  who  he  foresees  will  die  of  grief,  and  Friday's 
last  act,  the  placing  of  the  manuscript  in  the  cave  hard 
by  the  grave  which  would  be  necessary  for  the  completion 
of  the  story,  for  it  is  the  manuscript  that  explains  to  the 
captain  of  the  next  ship  that  visits  the  island  the  presence 
of  the  skeleton  by  the  grave.  The  discovery  of  and  the 
reading  of  the  manuscript  would  have  given  Defoe  an 
opportunity  to  evolve  a  new  soul — the  captain's.  How 
the  poor  savage  must  have  grieved  for  his  saviour  and 
master!  Like  a  dog,  the  captain  mutters  as  he  turns 
the  last  page. 

Gosse.  I  can  see  that  a  good  deal  is  to  be  said  in  favour 
of  entrusting  you  with  the  task  of  providing  new  ends  to 
old  masterpieces. 

Moore.  If  we  begin  to  put  jokes  on  each  other  we 
shall  never  arrive  at  the  end  of  our  task,  which  is  a  long 
one,  a  review  of  the  history  of  prose  narrative  in  England. 

Gosse.  Your  end  strikes  me  as  admirable,  but  it  would 
require  a  greater  writer  than  Defoe  to  execute  it,  and  I'm 
glad  you  were  not  by  to  suggest  it. 

Moore.    Why? 

Gosse.  I'm  afraid  the  new  wine  would  have  burst  the 
old  bottles — with  that  end  in  view  he  might  not  have 
succeeded  in  writing  the  story. 

Moore.  You  must  not  think  that  I'm  providing  a 
definite  plan  for  the  completion  of  the  story.  I'm  only 
throwing  out  hints.  But  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
Defoe  would  have  done  better  had  he  kept  Crusoe  on 
the  island.  And  it  would  be  amusing  to  write  the  end 
on  the  lines  I  have  suggested,  doing  for  Defoe  what 


AVOWALS  13 

Wagner  did  for  Gluck  and  what  Liszt  did  for  many 
writers.  Why  should  the  arrangements  of  masterpieces 
be  limited  to  music?  Why  should  we  not  rearrange 
literary  masterpieces? 

Gosse.  The  rearrangement  would  not  prove  acceptable. 

Moore.  It  would,  if  the  rearrangement  were  better 
than  the  original. 

Gosse.  Don  Quixote  is  another  masterpiece  that  ends 
unsatisfactorily. 

Moore.  I'm  glad  you  mentioned  Don  Quixote.  Defoe 
called  him  to  your  mind,  for  he,  too,  was  a  literary  hack, 
writing  many  comedies,  autos  and  poems,  unworthy  trash, 
till  he  stumbled  upon  a  subject  which  he  wrote  as  well 
as  it  could  be  written  till  he  came  to  the  end  of  his 
inspiration.  The  coming  to  the  end  of  one's  inspiration 
is  always  pathetic,  and  for  Cervantes  the  loss  was  doubly 
cruel,  for  it  came  suddenly  and  went  suddenly,  like  a 
wind.  A  fine  wind  it  was  while  it  lasted;  a  finer  never 
blew  peradventure,  not  excepting  the  wind  that  carried 
the  plays  along — Hamlet  and  Lear.  Cervantes  sailed  out 
of  harbour  in  a  grand  gale.  Who  lives  that  does  not 
sometimes  think  of  the  Castilian  gentleman,  exalted  by  a 
long  reading  of  the  literature  of  knight  errantry,  dis- 
covering armour  in  a  garret  and  repairing  the  helmet 
with  brown  paper  on  wire? 

Gosse.  Admirable,  thrice  admirable  is  the  description 
of  the  knight  himself.  Nor  do  I  think  that  it  is  going  too 
far  to  say  that  never  in  literature  has  so  perfect  a  corre- 
spondence been  found  between  the  spirit  and  the  flesh. 
And  all  you  who  have  sought  for  this  correspondence  will 
accept  the  knight  of  the  rueful  countenance  as  the  un- 
paralleled example  in  which  the  flesh  or  lack  of  flesh 
proclaims  the  soul. 

Moore.  Tourgueneff  descried  a  fitting  envelope  for  the 
spirit  of  Bazaroff,  but  Tourgueneff's  conception  is  small 
compared  with  the  world-wide  figure  of  the  knight  riding 


14  AVOWALS 

forth  by  himself  in  the  first  instance,  and  then  returning 
in  search  of  an  esquire.  As  we  watch  the  twain  riding 
side  by  side  through  the  highlands,  we  seem  to  be  looking 
upon  some  great  sculpture  of  Egypt  and  Assyria.  Never 
was  the  world  so  wide  before  nor  gestures  so  eternal. 

Gosse.  And  we  seem  to  be  listening  to  Shakespeare 
himself,  who  was  a  contemporary;  and  this  sets  me 
thinking  that  perhaps  the  special  quality  of  their  humour 
was  not  the  insular  possession  of  England,  but  belonged 
to   the   great   century   that   produced   these   two   men. 

They  could  not  have  known  each  other,  and  yet 

But  I  must  not  allow  our  conversation  to  drift  into 
Shakespearean  controversy.  You  said  that  never  was 
the  world  so  wide  before  nor  gestures  so  eternal. 

Moore.  As  in  the  first  adventures  when  the  knight 
charged  the  flock  and  afterwards  the  windmill.  And 
is  it  not  thrilling  to  remember  that  they  were  on  their 
way  to  the  inn  in  which  Don  Quixote  was  enrolled 
by  the  innkeeper  into  the  order  of  knighthood;  and 
indeed  I  cannot  keep  myself  from  mentioning  the  vigil 
undertaken  at  the  instigation  of  the  innkeeper,  or  of 
telling  you  that  it  was  the  innkeeper  who  sent  the  knight 
home  in  search  of  an  esquire.  The  Don  returns  with 
Sancho  mounted  on  an  ass!  Was  ever  before  an  imagi- 
nation so  epical?  And  how  splendid  the  blanketing  of 
Sancho  in  the  inn  and  the  account  of  the  evil-smelling 
slut  stealing  by  mistake  into  the  knight's  bed,  and  he 
lying  between  sleeping  and  waking,  dreaming  of  Dulcinea, 
instead  of  into  the  bed  of  the  lusty  waggoner  who  had 
been  looking  forward  to  her  all  that  day  for  many  weary 
miles.  After  reading  these  pages  I  lay  immersed  in 
genius,  like  a  mediaeval  saint  in  God,  the  host  still  melt- 
ing on  his  tongue;  and  I  continued  in  ecstasy  till  the 
twain  reached  an  almost  savage  landscape,  admirably 
described. 

The  time  must  have  been  late  in  the  afternoon,  for 


AVOWALS  15 

there  still  lingers  in  my  mind  a  memory  of  peaks  brilliant 
against  the  sun  setting,  and  my  ear  still  holds  like  a  shell 
Don  Quixote's  voice  telling  Sancho  that  he  wishes  to 
strip  himself  naked  and  stand  upon  his  head,  and  Sancho 
begging  the  knight  to  refrain,  saying  that  the  sight  of  his 
master's  naked  rump  in  the  air  will  bring  up  his  stomach. 

Gosse.  You  will  allow  me  to  interrupt  you  for  a  mo- 
ment. The  credit  of  introducing  landscape  into  fiction 
has  always  been  granted  to  Rousseau.  But  your  mention 
of  the  rugged  landscape  in  Cervantes  puts  it  into  my 
mind  that  the  honour  of  introducing  landscape  back- 
ground into  fiction  really  belongs  to  Cervantes.  I  remem- 
ber the  landscape  you  allude  to;  it  is  brushed  in  with  the 
energy  of  Salvator  Rosa. 

Moore.  It  is,  indeed,  and  many  others.  But  I  would 
remind  you  that  yourself  deprecated  the  introduction  of 
Shakespearean  controversy  into  our  talk,  and  you  did 
well,  and  I  did  ill  when  I  spoke  of  Egyptian  and  Assyrian 
sculpture,  for  the  landscapes  through  which  the  knight 
and  his  escort  follow  their  adventures  are  superterrestrial. 
We  have  left  our  miserable  little  planet  for  a  larger  one, 
Jupiter  maybe,  and  the  book  drops  from  our  hands  in 
amazement  when  the  Don  throws  his  heels  into  the  air. 
Cervantes'  last  inspiration,  no,  the  last  is  Sancho  turning 
in  the  saddle,  and  catching  sight  of  the  knight's  shanks 
above  his  shirt,  he  drops  into  reverie,  falls  to  considering 
his  relation,  for  he  is  on  his  way  back  to  recount  the 
knight's  last  exploits  to  Dulcinea. 

The  book  should  have  ended  here,  for  God  himself 
could  not  have  invented  adventures  more  wonderful  than 
those  that  have  been.  I  have  forgotten  if  the  meeting 
with  the  gang  of  convicts,  and  the  subsequent  misunder- 
standing, and  the  severe  beating  he  receives  as  soon  as  he 
freed  them  from  their  chains,  comes  just  before  or  just 
after  Sancho's  departure.  For  the  sake  of  a  clear  division 
between  the  inspired  and  the  uninspired  Cervantes,  I 


16  AVOWALS 

would  have  it  come  before.  But  it  may  come  in  the 
next  division  of  the  story,  Nature  being  the  real  author 
and  Cervantes  no  more  than  her  mouthpiece.  Nature 
is  good  at  detail,  but  lacks  rhythm;  she  lingers  and  spoils 
the  harvest  with  an  aftermath.  It  may  come  in  the  next 
division,  yet  I  do  not  see  how  it  can,  for  we  are  introduced 
to  new  characters,  and  stories  are  told  that  no  one  re- 
members— Moorish  maidens  who  became  Christians  and 
such  like.  A  faint  memory  lingers  in  me  of  a  curate. 
Do  you  remember? 

Gosse.  My  unfortunate  memory,  oh,  my  unfortunate 
memory. 

Moore.  There  is  no  reason  for  being  disheartened,  not 
this  time,  for  it  may  be  doubted  if  even  Mr  Fitzmaurice 
Kelly  could  give  any  lucid  account  of  these  stories, 
though  he  refused  to  collaborate  with  me  in  an  edition 
that  would  exclude  all  extraneous  matter  and  follow 
closely  the  fortunes  of  the  knight  and  his  esquire.  He 
was  right,  for  his  closer  study  of  the  book  than  mine  had 
revealed  to  him,  let  us  hope,  the  truth  that  the  original 
inspiration  was  too  wonderful  to  be  continued  by  Gods  or 
men;  and  henceforth  Cervantes,  the  hack  writer,  turns 
the  handle  of  his  hurdy  gurdy,  setting  Don  Quixote  and 
his  esquire  dancing  to  the  old  tune — Don  Quixote  start- 
ing out  on  some  new  adventure,  Sancho  holding  up  his 
hands. 

Gosse.  It  has  often  been  said  that  a  finer  and  nobler 
nature  begins  to  appear  in  the  knight  in  the  second  part; 
and  I  do  not  think  that  this  is  true  to  nature,  for  if  we 
contain  any  grain  of  good  it  ripens  as  we  live. 

Moore.  The  change  in  the  knight,  if  there  be  any 
change,  does  not  help  us  to  any  new  appreciation  of 
him,  and  I  say  this  though  I  know  in  saying  it  I  am 
at  variance  with  Tourgueneff,  who  drew  the  attention 
of  the  Moscow  students  to  the  death  of  Don  Quixote 
trampled  to  death  by  a  herd  of  swine,  and  to  the  last 


AVOWALS  17 

words  of  the  chivalrous  knight.  I  will  not  ask  you  what 
they  are;  I,  too,  have  forgotten  them,  and  only  remember 
that:  though  all  things  pass  away,  even  beauty,  chivalry 
and  truth,  goodness  remains.  A  stupid  paraphrase, 
doubtless,  but  a  beautiful  idea  it  is,  truly,  that  he  who 
had  followed  goodness  all  his  life  long  should  find  his 
death  at  last  under  cloven  hooves.  But  the  herd  of 
swine  is  introduced  into  the  story  casually — a  casual 
thought  introduced  into  a  casually  composed  sequel  in 
which  Sancho  becomes  a  pour  of  proverbial  wisdom 
while  the  knight  rides  wrapped  in  his  meditations,  like 
Falstaff,  for  Shakespeare,  too,  intellectualised  his  knight, 
thereby  puzzling  the  mummers  who  try  to  portray  him. 
But,  as  you  just  said,  we  must  not  allow  Shakespearean 
controversy  to  beguile  us  from  our  search  of  a  first-rate 
mind  expressing  itself  in  English  prose  narrative. 

Gosse.  As  that  is  our  quest,  it  seems  to  me  that  I  can- 
not do  better  than  to  ask  you  to  put  a  precise  meaning 
on  the  words:  a  first-rate  mind.  Kant's  mind  was  first- 
rate,  but  it  was  not  the  sort  of  mind  that  instigated  works 
of  art,  and  it  has  often  occurred  to  me  that  something 
more  than  mere  mind  is  necessary  to  produce  the  pictures 
— shall  we  say? — of  Manet  and  Degas?  Yet  a  mind  is 
visible  in  their  works. 

Moore.  I  wonder  if  we  can  differentiate  between  the 
mind  and  the  instincts  of  the  mind?  If  we  can,  I  should 
prefer  to  say  that  instincts  of  the  mind  are  discernible  in 
the  works  of  the  great  masters.  But  I'm  always  appre- 
hensive of  metaphysical  quicksands  and  mists,  and  before 
putting  down  the  helm  I  will  remark  that  the  artist's 
instinct  is  the  sail  that  carries  the  boat  along,  and  his 
reason  the  rudder  that  keeps  the  boat's  head  to  the  wind; 
without  a  rudder  the  sail  loses  the  wind.  The  simile 
seems  to  hold  good.  An  instinct  will  carry  the  artist 
some  distance,  but  if  we  have  not  reason  he  will  drift  like 
the  rudderless  boat,  making  no  progress  at  all. 


18  AVOWALS 

Gosse.  As  good  an  explanation  as  we  shall  get  of  some- 
thing that  will  always  remain  a  mystery.  And  if  I  may 
continue  your  thought  for  you  I  would  say  that  works 
in  which  reason  plays  too  large  a  part  do  not  satisfy  us. 

Moore.  Our  instincts  are  deeper  than  our  reason,  and 
it  is  pleasant  to  remember  that  art  rises  out  of  our  primal 
nature,  and  that  the  art  that  never  seems  trivial  is  in- 
stinctive. 

Gosse.  If  I  may  do  so  without  seeming  egotistical,  I 
would  remind  you  that  I  have  touched  on  the  same  point 
in  my  History  of  English  Literature,  saying  that  George 
Eliot  seems  trivial,  especially  in  the  books  in  which  she 
was  anxious  to  seem  profound. 

Moore.  Quite  so.  Manet  was  never  anxious,  and  did 
not  waste  time  at  keyholes  like  Degas,  but  said,  if  not 
aloud,  to  himself,  we  are  original  or  we  aren't,  but  we  do 
not  become  original  by  sending  away  the  model  who 
weighs  eight  stone,  and  calling  in  the  butcher's  wife  who 
weighs  twenty-nine,  and  asking  her  to  strip  and  stand  in 
front  of  a  tin  bath,  or  by  painting  one  cheek  of  the  wife's 
backside  green  and  the  other  blue,  like  Besnard. 

Gosse.  You  would  regard  George  Eliot  as  a  trivial 
writer,  and  Sterne  as  serious? 

Moore.  Of  course  I  should,  Gosse;  you're  helping  me; 
I  cannot  find  words  to  tell  you  how  much,  and  my  essay 
seems  to  be  coming.  You're  not  going?  I  will  not  hear 
of  your  going;  back  to  your  chair,  for  you're  helping  me 
even  more  than  I  expected  you  would,  and  I  expected 
a  great  deal  of  help  from  you.  .  .  .  You  are  helping  me, 
putting  the  words  I  want  into  my  mouth,  that  the  English 
novel  is  silly,  illiterate,  sentimental,  erudite  and  pompous 
by  turns;  but  serious,  never!  How  true!  And  how 
could  it  be  else,  for  in  the  seventeenth  century  we  were 
living  in  moated  castles  defended  by  retainers  who  dined 
with  their  chief  in  banqueting  halls,  raising  or  lowering 
the  drawbridge  as  the  occasion  required;    life  was  too 


AVOWALS  19 

unsettled  to  admit  a  literature  whose  subject  must  always 
be,  perhaps  to  a  large  extent,  a  description  of  social  life; 
and  it  would  seem  that  social  life  was  thrust  somewhat 
suddenly  upon  England,  drawing-rooms  or  salons  having 
just  arrived  from  France,  unintroduced  by  any  sufficient 
prose  literature.  But  without  regard  for  this  lack  of 
preparation  the  drawing-rooms  insisted  on  being  enter- 
tained, and  they  took  what  they  could  get — Tom  Jones, 
I  see  it  all;  there  was  no  standard,  and  it  was  out  of  the 
enthusiasm  of  our  first  drawing-rooms  that  the  belief 
arose  which  soom  developed  into  a  tradition,  that  Tom 
Jones  should  be  accepted  as  the  classic  example  of  English 
prose  narrative. 

Gosse.  Scion  of  the  Georgian  house. 

Moore.  Yes,  sprung  from  the  Georgian  house — from 
the  Georgian  drawing-room. 

Gosse.  You  couldn't  find  a  better  springboard  for  your 
essay. 

Moore.  I'm  glad  you  think  so,  and  I  hope  you  will 
allow  me  to  continue  talking  a  little  longer.  You've  no 
idea  what  a  help  you  are. 

Gosse.  Proceed. 

Moore.  I  read  Tom  Jones  in  the  influence  of  the  tradi- 
tion that  I  have  just  mentioned,  and 

Gosse.  I  hope  you  haven't  neglected  to  look  into  the 
book  again,  for  if  you  haven't  I  cannot  help  you. 

Moore.  Yes,  I've  looked  into  the  book,  and  it  seemed 
more  lifeless  than  it  did  twenty  years  before,  when  I  read 
it  for  the  first  time.  It  was  then  as  an  old  and  withered 
tree,  whitened  branches  and  gaping  trunk 

Gosse.  Ready  to  fall,  having  aged  almost  out  of  recog- 
nition in  the  last  twenty  years.  An  excellent  impression 
of  a  decaying  masterpiece;  but  something  more  than  an 
impression  is  necessary  in  an  essay. 

Moore.  I  can  only  write  my  own  feelings,  and  shall 
have  to  say  that  at  the  end  of  the  first  hundred  pages  the 


20  AVOWALS 

book  fell  across  my  knees  and  set  me  asking  myself  how 
our  forefathers  had  managed  to  read  a  book  without  a 
glimpse  of  the  world  without  us,  or  any  account  of  the 
world  within.  It  is  difficult,  Gosse,  to  write  vividly  about 
an  entirely  empty  book,  vague,  like  a  fog,  yet  without 
mystery,  and  so  impersonal  that  we  begin  to  doubt  the 
existence  of  the  author,  and  in  self-defence  have  to  urge 
ourselves  out  of  the  belief  that  the  book  proceeded  from 
some  curious  machine,  a  lost  invention  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  Machinery  was  in  its  infancy  in  1750,  so  we 
know  that  a  living  man  must  have  written  it  or  dictated 
it,  and  the  theory  that  it  was  gabbled  into  a  phonograph 
is  untenable.  Even  so,  the  impersonality  of  the  book 
would  surprise  us,  so  empty  are  the  pages  of  all  traces  of 
preferences  and  aversions.  Since  I  have  begun  I  must 
tell  all,  Gosse.  Fielding  seems  to  have  been  without 
sensibility  of  any  kind,  mental  or  physical,  and  his  book 
is  therefore  the  most  personal  and  at  the  same  time  the 
most  impersonal  ever  written.  Mr  All  worthy,  the  first 
person  we  meet  in  it,  says  nothing  that  brings  him  before 
us;  we  are  told  nothing  about  him,  though  he  is  the 
owner  of  the  Georgian  house  in  which  the  first  scenes  are 
laid  and  the  pivot  on  which  the  story  turns,  and  we  drop 
the  book  to  consider  this  strange  reticence,  coming  at  last 
to  believe  that  the  author  felt  it  would  be  difficult  for 
him  to  set  before  the  reader  a  man  so  transparently 
conventional  that  he  could  not  be  even  suspected  of 
having  begotten  a  love  child,  and  shrank  from  a  task 
which,  even  if  it  were  successful,  might  weary  the  reader, 
to  fall  back  upon  a  simpler  plan  of  exposition,  saying  to 
himself:  the  obvious  is  always  the  best,  and  I  will  call  the 
gentleman  All  worthy;  the  name  will  allay  suspicion  even 
in  the  most  prone  to  suspicion.  A  daring  interpretation 
this  is  of  Fielding's  mind  during  the  composition  of  the 

first  part  of  his  notable  novel  which  you  may  accept  or 

Gosse.  Forgive  me  for  interrupting  you,  but  I  would 


AVOWALS  21 

not  have  you  fall  into  the  mistake  of  finding  fault  with  an 
eighteenth-century  author  for  not  writing  naturalistically. 

Moore.  I  think  my  words  were:  without  a  glimpse  of 
the.  world  without  us,  and  to  these  I  might  have  added: 
without  even  such  glimpses  as  we  get  from  Jean  Jacques. 
In  Tom  Jones  we  are  in  a  fieldless,  treeless,  flowerless 
planet;  but  even  Fielding's  indifference  to  nature  would 
not  matter  if  the  book  were  not  passionless;  any  sudden 
movement  of  passion  or  feeling  would  provoke  our  sym- 
pathy, and  we  should  see  in  our  imagination  the  sun 
lighting  up  the  middle  distance  and  the  raincloud  above 
it.  A  description  of  Manon  is  not  to  be  found  in  the 
text,  but  Manon  is  always  before  our  eyes,  for  Abbe 
Prevost  realised  Manon  intensely,  whereas  Fielding,  in 
his  attempt  to  describe  Sophia,  shows  himself  as  in- 
sensible to  the  magic  of  woman  as  he  is  to  that  of  nature. 

Gosse.  It  is  probable  that  Fielding  succeeded  better 
with  men  than  with  women,  and  you  will  not  deny  that 
Squire  Western  is  a  very  real  person  and  one  very  typical 
of  the  eighteenth  century. 

Moore.  Squire  Western  goes  his  own  gait  and  speaks 
his  own  lingo;  we  see  and  hear  him;  but,  if  I  may  say  so 
without  seeming  to  disparage  Fielding  needlessly,  Squire 
Western  is  too  obvious  to  be  considered  highly;  he  is 
hardly  more  worthy  of  aesthetic  criticism  than  the  carica- 
tures of  Gilray  and  Rowlandson.  I  would  not  mitigate 
a  merit,  but  I  would  have  it  understood  that  Nature  draws 
so  well  sometimes  that  even  a  very  bad  draughtsman 
cannot  miss  a  likeness.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that 
Squire  Western  is  a  rough  sketch  from  life,  and  the  in- 
vention of  the  different  episodes  in  the  book  are  so  poor 
that  I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  the  one  good  one,  the 
Squire's  relinquishment  of  his  pursuit  of  Sophia,  to  follow 
a  pack  of  foxhounds  that  crossed  the  road  in  pursuit  of 
a  fox,  was,  like  the  Squire  himself,  taken  from  life. 

Gosse.  But  you  admire  Rowlandson? 


22  AVOWALS 

Moore.  Yes,  I  admire  Rowlandson  till  somebody 
speaks  of  Goya. 

Gosse.  And  you  know  that  Thackeray  said  that  since 
Tom  Jones  nobody  had  dared  to  paint  the  portrait  of  a 
man  in  fiction,  meaning,  I  take  it,  that  Fielding  was  the 
first  to  tell  us  that  a  young  man  might  be  truly  in  love 
with  Sophia  Western  and  yet  commit  an  act  of  impro- 
priety with  Molly  Seagrim. 

Moore.  A  knowledge  which  he  might  have  gathered 
from  observation  of  his  bull  terrier;  and  my  reproach  is 
that  Fielding  has  not  attempted  to  differentiate  between 
dogkind  and  mankind,  and  that  he  does  not  seem  aware 
that  it  is  necessary  to  do  so,  not  even  in  his  own  mind. 

Gosse.  Have  you  nothing  to  say  in  praise  of  Fielding's 
style? 

Moore.  He  writes  with  gusto,  a  quality  we  seldom 
meet  with  in  modern  literature,  perhaps  because  we  are 
becoming  more  thoughtful;  and  he  keeps  it  up  like  an 
actor  who  knows  he  is  playing  in  a  bad  play. 

Gosse.  But  you  have  not  told  me  how  you  explain 
away  Thackeray's  preference  for  Tom  Jones. 

Moore.  I  find  the  examination  of  my  own  mind  so 
difficult  that  I  cannot  for  the  moment  undertake  to 
examine  Thackeray's.  The  best  plan  will  be  to  try  to 
believe  that  he  spoke  casually. 

Gosse.  Now  I  must  reprove  you  for  a  lack  of  serious- 
ness. For  nearly  two  hundred  years  Fielding  has  held 
undisputed  sway  as  our  prime  novelist. 

Moore.  We  shall  meet  others  in  the  course  of  our 
literary  inquisition  whose  reputations  seem  as  unmerited 
as  Fielding's.  I  know,  I  feel  that  the  prospect  is  a  little 
alarming,  but  we  have  lighted  our  lanterns  and  are  look- 
ing about  for  a  serious  writer.     Let  us  get  on. 

Gosse.  But  how  shall  we  recognize  him  should  we 
meet  him? 

Moore.  Now,  Gosse,  you  are  inventing  difficulties  that 


AVOWALS  23 

do  not  exist,  and  I  must  reprove  you,  for  was  it  not  you 
that  put  forward  Laurence  Sterne  and  George  Eliot  as 
typical  examples  of  the  serious  and  trivial  in  literature? 
and  with  these  in  mind  we  shall  not  miss  a  really  serious 
writer  if  our  lights  should  flash  him  into  view.  A  little 
patience  is  all  I  ask,  Gosse;  other  examples  will  be 
discovered  later,  but  we  may  not  anticipate  them,  for 
I  am  eager  to  remind  you  that  in  your  History  of  English 
Literature  you  speak  of  the  extreme  beauty  of  Sterne's 
style,  and  the  adjective  pleases  me;  I  cannot  tell  you 
why,  but  it  seems  to  me  to  discover  the  truth,  or  some 
of  it,  and  I  would  merely  add  that  no  writer  has  come 
down  so  unchanged  as  Sterne. 

Gosse.  And  I  welcome  the  addition.  I'm  glad  that  we 
agree  about  Sterne. 

Moore.  But,  my  dear  friend,  we  are  always  agreed, 
except  when  you  speak  of  Sterne's  unseemly  life;  a  sad 
remark  that  is  of  yours,  and  if  I  may  be  permitted  to  say 
so,  lacking  point;  for  we  could  not  have  Sterne's  style 
without  his  unseemly  life,  we  accept  the  one  for  the 
sake  of  the  other,  just  as  we  accept  the  unseemliness 
of  Christianity  in  practice  for  the  sake  of  the  words  of 
Jesus,  overlooking  the  Bishop  of  London,  who 

Gosse.  I'm  afraid  you  don't  know  the  Bishop  of 
London. 

Moore.  My  writings  have  placed  me,  alas,  under  inter- 
diction, and  so  have  yours,  Gosse.  You  mentioned  that 
you  are  not  a  member  of  his  club,  but  neglected  to  say 
that  you  would  have  been  if  you  had  not  written  a 
masterpiece.     The  truth,  Gosse. 

Gosse.  The  Athenaeum  Club  is  becoming  wearisome, 
and  I  must  insist  that  we  return  to  Sterne  without  delay. 
I'm  glad  that  you  approve  of  my  adjective,  but  why  it 
should  have  taken  your  fancy  so  completely  I  cannot 
imagine — not  at  this  moment. 

Moore.  You  say  that  his  selected  elements  attract  the 


24  AVOWALS 

imitation  of  some  more  or  less  analogous  spirit,  meaning 
thereby  that  his  selected  elements  excite  an  analogous 
spirit  to  imitation,  a  criticism  that  has  a  special  interest 
for  me,  for  before  I  read  a  line  of  Tristram  Shandy  or  The 
Sentimental  Journey,  the  newspapers  began  to  say  that  the 
prose  of  Hail  and  Farewell  recalled  Sterne.  That  my  best 
pages  should  recall  the  worst  in  The  Sentimental  Journey, 
if  it  be  possible  to  discern  a  page  less  inspired  than  its 
fellow  in  a  fully  inspired  work,  pleases  me  to  hear,  for 
we  may  be  pleased  by  flattery  without  being  duped  by 
flattery;  and,  my  curiosity  awakened  by  constant  refer- 
ences to  Sterne  while  my  book  was  under  review,  I  ab- 
stracted a  little  red  book  from  the  library  of  a  common 
friend,  saying  to  myself:  many  empty  days  lie  before  me, 
and  though  I  cannot  read  in  a  railway  train  I  may  be  able 
to  read  on  board  a  ship.  And  I  read  despite  the  drum- 
ming of  the  screw,  raising  my  eyes  from  time  to  time 
from  the  exquisite  page  to  the  beautifullest  of  seas,  re- 
gretful that  I  was  not  reading  on  board  a  felucca,  lateen 
rigged.  The  French  critic  you  quote  who  compared 
Sterne  to  one  of  the  little  bronze  satyrs  of  antiquity,  in 
whose  hollow  bodies  exquisite  odours  were  stored,  seems 
to  me  to  have  wandered  near  to  the  truth,  inasmuch  that 
The  Sentimental  Journey  recalls  antiquity,  perhaps  more 
than  any  other  book  of  the  modern  world.  Like  a  trans- 
lation of  some  small  Latin  or  Greek  work,  it  read  to  me, 
Daphnis  and  Chloe,  or  The  Golden  Ass,  or  which  other,  I 
ask,  for  I  am  without  erudition,  as  many  of  the  ancients 
were,  but  I  have  the  eyes  of  the  ancients,  I  think. 

Gosse.  I  should  like  to  hear  why  The  Sentimental 
Journey  reminds  you  of  classical  literature.  Just  a 
feeling 

Moore.  A  feeling,  certainly,  but  no  vague  one;  it  is 
his  sense  of  touch  which  never  fails  him,  rather  than  his 
speech  which  often  does,  that  carries  my  thoughts  back 
to  the  flowers  and  leaves  and  garlands  and  pilasters  and 


AVOWALS  25 

white  butterflies  of  the  city  disinterred,  only  known  to 
me  through  photographs  and  Mary  Hunter's  dining-room 
which  came  from  Venice. 

Italy  never  lost  her  paganism,  and  the  disinterment  of 
Pompeii  was,  in  a  sense,  unnecessary.  Italy  never  forgot 
her  antiquity,  nor  could  she  forget  it — her  coasts  washed 
on  either  side  by  the  bluest  of  seas.  And,  as  I  said,  I 
longed  for  felucca  lateen  rigged,  for  its  half-dozen  rough 
Italian  sailors  would  not  have  seemed  out  of  harmony  with 
the  fabled  sea,  the  birthplace  of  all  our  beautiful  European 
gods  as  the  passengers  were  who,  despite  my  admonitions, 
passed  through  the  Straits  of  Messina,  forgetful  of  Proser- 
pine gathering  flowers  on  the  plain  of  Enna.  I  spoke  to 
them  of  rugged  Polyphemus  peering  over  some  cliffs  and 
discerning  Galatea  in  the  foam,  I  besought  them  to  re- 
member Jupiter,  who,  disguised  in  the  form  of  a  bull, 
carried  Europa  away,  and  then,  turning  as  a  last  resource 
to  a  more  human  story,  I  spoke  of  Dido  weeping  on  the 
shores  of  the  African  coast. 

Gosse.  Without  enlisting  any  recruits? 

Moore.  Nobody  on  board  would  listen. 

Gosse.  Did  you  try  to  win  the  sympathies  of  the 
passengers  with  your  theory  that  art  is  touch? 

Moore.  Why  not,  Gosse?  All  audiences  are  good.  I 
would  sooner  speak  to  Bishops  than  remain  silent  for  six 
days.  Of  course,  I  tried  to  interest  the  passengers  in  the 
legends  of  the  bluest  and  beautifullest  of  seas.  I  spoke 
of  bitter  Medea,  Swinburne's  best  adjective,  or  one  of 
his  best. 

Gosse.  So  you  refrained  from  entertaining  the  pas- 
sengers with  such  literary  discourse  as  I  am  enjoying 
now.     Strange 

Moore.  It  is  strange,  and  much  stranger  than  you 
would  think  for,  to  find  oneself  cut  off  from  all  com- 
munication with  one's  ideas,  for  on  board  the  ship  that 
took  me  there  was  nobody  of  my  kin,  nobody  who  knew 


26  AVOWALS 

me  or  my  writings,  or  who  had  read  any  book  that  we 
have  read,  or  seen  any  pictures  that  we  have  seen — a 
strange  sense  of  estrangement  that  can  be  likened  to 
an  island  and  savages,  with  this  difference,  that  the 
passengers  and  myself  spoke  the  same  language,  but 
a  language  alienated  from  ideas  avails  us  nothing,  and 
you  will  appreciate  my  alarm  when  I  tell  you  that  the 
nearest  thing  to  intellectual  sympathy  I  could  find  on 
board  that  ship  was  a  man  who  explained  his  invention 
for  building  piers  out  of  concrete.  It  appears  to  have 
been  successful  somewhere  in  India.  He  was  on  his 
way  thither  to  lay  down  more  boxes  of  concrete,  and 
his  account  of  his  invention  interested  me,  for  there 
was  nothing  else  to  listen  to.  The  Sentimental  Journey 
is  not  a  long  book,  unfortunately.  Only  one  other  spoke 
to  me;  I've  forgotten  what  his  occupation  in  life  was; 
but  his  ignorance  is  rememberable:  what  book  are  you 
reading?  he  asked  one  day.  I  answered  him:  The  Senti- 
mental Journey,  and  began  to  tell  my  surprise  and  delight 
in  coming  upon  the  famous  phrase:  God  tempers  the  wind 
to  the  shorn  lamb.  A  phrase,  I  said,  that  many  believe 
to  be  in  the  Gospels,  for  it  sounds  like  Jesus.  It  isn't, 
nor  is  it  Sterne's.  He  got  it  from  a  half-witted  shep- 
herdess, and  does  not  give  her  French.  The  proverb 
seems  to  be  forgotten  in  France;  but  Sterne's  version 
started  it  on  a  new  life  in  England.  God  tempers  the 
wind  is  better  than:  God  measures  the  wind,  which  may 
be  the  French  turn  of  phrase.  It  was  not,  however,  this 
improvement  that  gave  the  proverb  immortality — but 
the  substitution  of  lamb  for  yoe.  A  shepherdess  would 
not  be  likely  to  speak  of  a  shorn  lamb.  Without  doubt 
it  is  the  yoe  that  is  shorn.  I  spell  the  word  phonetically, 
Gosse,  for  I  prefer  the  word  as  shepherds  pronounce  it. 
Sterne  changes  yoe  into  lamb,  thereby  bringing  a  little 
pathos  into  the  proverb;  and,  we  being  a  sentimental 
people,  I  was  saying  to  the  passenger  when  he  inter- 


AVOWALS  27 

rupted  me:  do  you  really  mean  to  tell  me  that  he  said 
God  tempers  the  wind  to  the  shorn  lamb?  Yes,  I  an- 
swered. Which  shows,  the  passenger  replied  derisively, 
that  he  knows  no  more  about  lambs  than  he  does  about 
pheasants.  A  howler  it  was  when  he  said  that  pheasants 
ate  mangel  wurzels;  but  this  is  a  worse  one;  who  ever 
heard  of  shorn  lambs? 

My  absent-minded  companion  imagined  that  I  was 
speaking  of  Lloyd  George!  It  was  Lloyd  George,  he 
thought,  who  said:  God  tempers  the  wind  to  the  shorn 
lamb,  and  it  seemed  useless  to  point  out  his  mistake  to 
him. 

Why,  here's  tea,  Gosse;  you'll  have  a  cup  with  me? 

Gosse.  You've  detained  me  already  a  long  while,  and 
my  wife  is  expecting  me  with  your  message  that  you  have 
kindly  promised  to  come  and  entertain  our  visitors. 

Moore.  But,  my  dear  friend,  you  promised  to  hear  me 
out,  and  just  as  we  arrive  at  the  interesting  part  of  the 
story,  you  say  you  must  go,  puzzling  me  rather  than 
helping  me,  throwing  a  rope  to  a  drowning  man  and 
withdrawing  it  before  he  reaches  the  bank.  There  are 
Johnson's  Rasselas  and  Goldsmith's  Vicar  of  Wakefield  to 
speak  about,  but  these  works  need  not  detain  us  long; 
neither  is  significant  of  the  novel  of  family  life  that  was 
preparing;  Rasselas  does  not  even  hint  at  it,  The  Vicar  of 
Wakefield  only  faintly.  And  the  next  writer  of  notoriety, 
if  not  of  importance,  is  one  of  whom  I  know  little,  only 
some  passages,  and  I  shall  be  beholden  to  you  for  infor- 
mation regarding  Roderick  Random,  Peregrine  Pickle  and 
Humphrey  Clinker,  titles  that  do  not  make  show  of  the 
poetic,  serious  literature  we  are  in  search  of,  presaging 
rather  abundant  horseplay  and  obscene  jests. 

Gosse.  Smollett  didn't  avoid  either.  But  have  you 
never  read  Smollett? 

Moore.  To  say  that  I  have  read  him  would  be  untrue, 
and  to  say  that  I  have  not  read  him  would  be  nearly  as 


28  AVOWALS 

untrue.  My  memory  of  him  is  gusto,  and  plenty  of  it, 
and  an  outlook  on  life  in  strict  conformity  with  his  style. 

Gosse.  Smollett  is  no  doubt  a  most  unseemly  writer, 
but  in  view  of  the  influence  he  exercised  and  still  exercises 
on  the  English  novel  I  would  have  you  consider  him  more 
carefully  than  you  seem  inclined  to  do,  for  Smollett  was 
not  only  the  translator  of  Gil  Bias,  but  the  master  builder 
of  this  special  kind  of  novel  of  adventure.  It  came  to 
him  from  Spain,  a  country  he  says  he  had  travelled  and 
knew  inside  out  and  from  end  to  end.  I  should  be  inclined 
to  regard  this  as  an  over-statement,  and  to  think  that  the 
spirit  and  form  alike  of  Don  Quixote  escaped  him.  The 
picaresque  novel 

Moore.  Before  we  go  any  further,  will  you  tell  me  in 
what  the  picaresque  novel  consists? 

Gosse.  I  think  I  can  define  it.  In  the  picaresque  novel 
the  reader  is  entertained  by  a  quickly  changing  spectacle : 
scenes  tacked  together,  it  hardly  matters  how  loosely,  the 
object  of  the  writer  being  to  amuse  the  reader  with  what 
is  passing  before  his  eyes,  regardless  of  what  has  happened 
before  and  what  may  happen  afterwards.  In  one  chapter 
we  are  in  a  thieves'  kitchen,  and  in  the  next  we  are  taken 
across  the  street  to  hear  a  young  man  paying  court  to  a 
young  woman,  or  to  watch  couples  assembled  for  dancing, 
or  to  any  other  spectacle  that  may  please  the  lively  fancy 
of  the  author  to  exhibit  for  our  pleasures.  A  thing  that 
seems  to  me  worthy  of  your  attention  is  the  passage  of 
Gil  Bias  through  France  without  leaving  a  trace  on 
French  literature,  a  point  that  criticism  has  very  strangely 
passed  over  in  silence  or  very  nearly  in  silence,  to  influence 
our  literature  profoundly;  and  it  would  be  interesting,  so 
it  seems  to  me,  if  you  were  to  trace  this  influence  all  the 
way  down  the  long  road  leading  from  Smollett  to  Dickens. 
It  penetrated  into  Ireland.  We  find  it  in  Lever  and  Lover, 
in  Handy  Andy,  for  instance. 

Moorh.    All  you  say  moves  me  so  deeply  that  I  cannot 


AVOWALS  29 

fail  to  remember  it,  and  my  contribution  to  the  criticism 
advised  by  you  will  be  that  what  did  happen  might  have 
been  predicted.  A  great  psychologist  of  races  who  was 
a  great  sesthetician  as  well  would  have  been  able  to  say: 
the  French  having  a  sense  of  synthesis  will  not  be  attracted 
to  the  picaresque  novel,  but  the  English  being  without 
this  sense  will  be  drawn  to  it  like  flies  to  a  honeypot.  How 
right  I  was  to  ask  you  to  stay  to  tea,  Gosse.  And  now, 
is  there  anybody  between  Smollett  and  Walter  Scott 
worthy  of  our  consideration? 

Gosse.  Nobody  of  importance,  none  that  may  impede 
the  flights  of  your  fancy. 

Moore.  Then  I'll  pick  up  the  story  of  the  novel  where 
I  left  it;  the  Georgian  house  created  a  demand  for  the 
drawing-room  entertainment,  and  Fielding  fell  in  with  the 
humour  of  our  first  drawing-rooms  accidentally.  He  was 
followed  by  Johnson  and  Goldsmith,  who  wrote  stories, 
hoping,  of  course,  that  their  stories  would  please  some- 
body; the  desire  of  an  audience  does  not  imply  willingness 
on  the  part  of  the  author  to  write  anything  he  thinks  the 
public  will  buy;  Smollett  may  have  made  a  good  deal  of 
money  by  writing,  but  he  wrote  to  please  himself,  I  think 
— in  the  main,  for  literature  had  not  yet  become  a  trade. 

Gosse.     It  was  Walter  Scott  that  made  it  one. 

Moore.  It  doesn't  surprise  me.  His  name  was  always 
antipathetic  to  me;  even  in  the  days  when  my  father  read 
The  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel  aloud,  I  could  not  keep  out 
of  my  mind  the  image  of  an  amiable  grocer,  counting  the 
jingling  couplets  off  on  fingers  full  of  sand  and  sugar.  My 
father  knew  the  first  two  cantos  practically  by  heart,  and 
my  mother  long  passages  from  Marmion,  which  she  would 
repeat  under  the  archway  when  we  went  to  Castle  Carra 
to  picnic.  It  must  have  been  the  prices  paid  to  Scott  for 
poems  that  duped  them.  You  mention  in  your  History  of 
English  Literature  that  £1000  was  paid  for  The  Lay  of  the 
Last  Minstrel. 


30  AVOWALS 

Gosse.  And  £4000  for  Marmion.  Abbotsford  was  no 
doubt  a  great  sinning  house  till  the  crash  came,  but  when 
it  came  you  must  not  forget  that  Scott  ceased  to  improvise 
novels  to  buy  farms,  as  Carlyle  charged  him  with  doing. 
Henceforth  his  pen  was  dedicated  to  the  payment  of  his 
debts. 

Moore.  Thereby  accepting  the  morality  of  the  grocer 
as  applicable  to  the  artist,  a  thesis  the  absurdity  of  which 
I  never  fully  appreciated  till  the  other  day,  when  a  friend 
of  mine  withdrew  his  manuscripts  from  an  agent  who  had 
put  his  wife  aside  to  live  with  his  clerk.  The  agent  re- 
proached the  novelist  with  having  done  likewise.  But  the 
morality  of  the  artist,  said  the  novelist,  is  not  to  be  con- 
fused with  the  morality  of  the  agent.  The  agent,  being  the 
intermediary  between  the  artist  and  the  public,  must  be  a 
man  of  irreproachable  morals.  Don't  you  see?  Of  course, 
the  poor  man  saw,  but  the  spell  of  Aphrodite  was  upon 
him. 

Gosse.  Lo,  the  white  implacable  Aphrodite.  But 
we're  straying  from  the  questions  at  issue. 

Moore.  Only  from  Scott  to  the  literary  agent.  Abbots- 
ford  !  A  literary  agent  would  have  rejoiced  in  the  vocables ! 
Abbotsford,  Abbotsford!  he  would  say,  is  a  name  to 
conjure  with,  and  I  can  hear  him  in  imagination  muttering 
on  the  terrace:  Sir  Walter  must  have  money  to  keep  it 
up,  and  by  a  judicious  management  of  the  serial  rights 
for  New  Zealand  it  can  be  done,  and  it  must  be  done,  for 
the  public  likes  its  author  to  live  in  towers.  There  were 
towers,  Gosse,  at  Abbotsford,  or  Scott's  literary  agent 
would  not  have  allowed  him  to  take  the  place.  I  have 
forgotten  the  architecture,  but  there  must  have  been 
towers,  for  nothing  else  but  the  upkeep  of  the  towers 
could  have  compelled  a  man  to  continue  rhyming  the 
romantic  page  morning  after  morning. 

Gosse.  But  are  you  sure  that,  in  speaking  about  Scott, 
you  have  not  dropped  into  subterfuge,  evasion,  or — shall 


AVOWALS  31 

I  say  it? — humour?  I  seem  to  miss  in  your  criticism  the 
fine,  direct,  simple  thinking  the  absence  of  which  in  the 
English  novel  afflicts  you.  I  would  ask  you,  in  your  own 
interest,  mind  you,  so  that  when  you  sit  down  to  write 
your  essay  it  shall  be  with  a  clear  mind,  embracing  every 
aspect  of  your  intricate  and  difficult  subject,  if  some  of 
what  I  believe  to  be  a  sincere  aversion  from  Scott's  poems 
and  novels  (I  presume  the  novels  fail  to  please  you  almost 
to  the  same  extent  as  the  poems)  may  not  be  attributed 
to  Scott's  attempt  to  live  on  literature  as  the  barons  of 
the  Middle  Ages  lived  upon  forays. 

Moore.  The  works  of  our  successful  authors  do  not 
allow  us  to  believe  that  they  wrote  to  please  themselves, 
and  to  do  them  justice  they  do  not  pretend  that  their 
works  could  interest  anybody  who  is  not  more  debased 
than  themselves. 

Gosse.  I  am  not  certain  that  what  you  say  is  not  true; 
but  an  inquiry  would  lead  us  far  from  the  task  in  which 
we  are  engaged,  nor  should  we  ever  arrive  at  any  clear 
knowledge  of  the  psychology  of  successful  authorship 
through  inquiry,  for  the  authors  we  have  in  mind  could 
not  tell  us  even  if  they  would.  We  can  only  know  the 
successful  author  through  our  common  humanity;  and  I 
am  inclined  to  think  that  everybody  writes  to  please 
himself,  and  that  although  the  writer  may  know  his 
books  are  not  as  good  as  the  books  on  the  shelves  above 
him,  he  will  continue  to  take  pleasure  in  his  own  work 
with  a  sigh  of  regret  perhaps  that  it  isn't  better.  It  is 
possible  that  you  yourself  heave  a  sigh  after  reading 
Landor's  Helen  and  Achilles;  but  for  that  you  do  not 
destroy  your  manuscript,  and,  this  being  so,  you  should 
be  able  to  put  yourself  in  the  position  of  the  most  inferior 
writer  amongst  us  and  understand  that  he,  too,  as  much  as 
Landor,  writes  as  well  as  he  can  and  takes  pleasure  in  it. 

Moore.  I  believe  you're  right.  I  remember  a  friend 
in  the  old  days  saying  to  me:   I  know  that  I  could  not 


32  AVOWALS 

write  like  Ibsen,  and  I  wouldn't  if  I  could.  He  was  a 
successful  dramatist,  who 

Gosse.  Who  liked  to  please  his  public  just  as  you  like 
to  please  yours. 

Moore.  You're  a  better  psychologist  than  I  imagined 
you  to  be,  Gosse,  and  your  last  admonitions  contain  signs 
and  traces  of  the  mind  that  wrote  Father  and  Son. 

Gosse.  Every  man  writes  what  pleases  him  to  write, 
and  the  choice  is  not  given  him  to  do  otherwise.  Scott 
could  not  breathe  the  pure  air  of  Mount  Ida — calm 
heights  where  the  intellect  sits  enthroned. 

Moore.  Amid  snows  unsoiled  even  by  eagles'  talons. 
Vocal  sculpture  over  against  marmoreal  seas.  But  Landor 
could  descend  at  will  into  the  boudoir  and  be  witty.  You 
remember,  no  doubt,  how  delightfully  the  Duchesse  de 
Fontanges  talks  to  Bossuet,  and  will  agree  with  me  that 
Balzac  has  little  to  show  as  true,  or  Ingres  anything  more 
beautiful.  And  you  remember  her  who  gazes  across 
melancholy  Flemish  lands  dreaming  her  soul  away  in 
thoughts  of  one  in  Paris — thoughts  that  she  herself  is  only 
faintly  aware  of.  But  I  urge  no  fault.  I  was  meditating 
on  the  beautiful  things  that  few  ever  see  or  hear.  Time 
can  do  nothing.  Nor  is  it  likely  that  Pater's  and  Landor's 
readers  will  increase;  but  there  will  always  be  a  few. 
You  know  the  prophecy,  arriving  early  and  staying  late. 
All  the  same,  the  thought  is  a  sad  one  that  the  next 
generation  may  be  more  concerned  with  my  writings  than 
with  Landor's  or  Pater's,  and  merely  because  they  are 
inferior.     Ah,  there  is  the  sting. 

Gosse.     Does  your  distress  extend  to  my  writings? 

Moore.  No,  Gosse,  I  hadn't  thought  of  yours,  but  I 
am  sure  you  would  shed  the  last  drop  of  your  blood  to 
make  Landor  and  Pater  known  to  the  next  generation. 

Gosse.  I  wonder  if  you  would  shed  the  first  drop  of 
yours?     But  we're  wasting  time. 

Moore.     Wasting  time!     Are  you,  then,  so  eager  to 


AVOWALS  33 

return  to  Scott,  who  never  seems  to  have  suffered  from 
writer's  cramp?  It  was  my  father's  wont  to  tell  that 
Scott  wrote  for  three  or  four  hours  every  morning,  and 
spent  the  afternoons  on  horseback,  a  mode  of  life  that 
seemed  to  me  disgraceful,  the  romantic  page  requiring 
in  my  ten-year-old  imagination  all  the  poet's  life,  as  the 
cocoon  requires  all  the  silkworm's.  It  was  some  years 
after  that  my  dislike  of  forays  and  joustings  suited  to 
family  reading  was  stirred  up  again  by  an  engraving 
in  which  a  benevolent  grey-haired  old  gentleman  sat 
under  a  purple  curtain,  pen  in  hand,  not  writing,  nor 
thinking,  for  when  a  man  thinks,  his  countenance  empties, 
losing  all  expression.  Scott  was  not  thinking;  there  was 
little  time  for  thinking;  he  was  writing  off  his  debts  at 
the  time,  and  had  given  an  hour  to  a  portrait  painter; 
and  his  right  hand  held  the  grey  goose  quill,  while  his 
left  hand  caressed  the  head  of  an  intrusive  deerhound. 
I  saw  another  portrait  later,  after  my  father's  death,  and 
my  misgivings  were  increased  by  the  insipid  face  that 
Raeburn  discerned  as  the  real  author  of  Ivanhoe. 

Gosse.  It  might  be  as  well  to  leave  out  deductions 
drawn  from  personal  appearances.  You've  been  painted 
a  great  many  times,  and  I'm  not  certain  that  some  of 
your  portraits  might  not  lead  to  unfavourable  interpre- 
tations of  the  value  of  your  own  writings.  We'll  say  no 
more  on  this  point,  but  will  return  to  the  prose  narratives. 
Of  course,  Ivanhoe  was  put  into  your  hands,  and  you  were 
bidden  to  read  it. 

Moore.  Ivanhoe,  Burke's  Speeches,  Macaulay  are  en- 
during memories  of  an  unhappy  childhood.  But  I  liked 
The  Bride  of  Lammermoor.     The  romantic  prediction: 

When  the  last  heir  to  Ravenshood  to  Ravenshood  shall  ride 

To  woo  a  dead  maiden  to  be  his  bride, 

He  shall  stable  his  steed  in  the  Kelpet's  flow 

And  his  name  shall  be  lost  for  evermo'. 

finds  an  echo  in  most  hearts  (in  every  heart),  for  the  note 


34  AVOWALS 

is  a  true  note  seldom  struck  though  often  sought;  and 
Carlyle  could  not  have  been  indifferent  to  its  appeal, 
though  he  makes  little  of  it,  telling  in  his  vindictive  essay 
how,  the  romantic  page  being  finished,  Scott  donned  a 
green  jerkin  and  mounted  a  palfrey  and  prepared  to  go 
away  hunting;  but  one  morning  a  pig  could  not  be  per- 
suaded to  leave  the  hounds,  and  Sir  Walter  had  to  inter- 
vene, and  cracking  his  whip,  to  the  amusement  of  his  re- 
tainers he  drove  away  the  romantic  porker.  Carlyle's 
account  of  the  episode  amounts  almost  to  assassination; 
it  exceeds  his  fell  and  ferine  account  of  Coleridge  as  the 
poet  shuffled  across  the  terrace  muttering:  subjective, 
objective.  But  you  must  not  go,  Gosse,  till  you've  heard 
Mr  Waverley  in  a  love  scene.  I  opened  the  book  this 
morning. 

Gosse.  And  it  opened  at  the  page  you  are  going  to  read 
to  me.     How  very  remarkable. 

Moore.  Forgive  me,  Mr  Waverley.  I  should  incur  my 
own  heavy  censure  did  I  delay  expressing  my  sincere 
conviction  that  I  can  never  regard  you  otherwise  than  as 
a  valued  friend.  I  should  do  you  the  highest  injustice 
did  I  conceal  my  sentiments  for  a  moment — I  see  I  dis- 
tress you,  and  I  grieve  for  it,  but  better  now  than  later; 
and  O!  better  a  thousand  times,  Mr  Waverley,  that  you 
should  feel  a  present  momentary  disappointment  than  the 
long  and  heartsickening  griefs  which  attend  a  rash  and 
ill-assorted  marriage! 

Good  God!  But  why  should  you  anticipate  such  con- 
sequences from  a  union  where  birth  is  equal,  where  for- 
tune is  favourable,  where,  if  I  may  venture  to  say  so,  the 
tastes  are  similar,  where  you  allege  no  preference,  where 
you  even  express  a  favourable  opinion  of  him  whom  you 
reject? 

Mr  Waverley,  I  have  that  favourable  opinion,  and  so 
strongly,  that  though  I  would  rather  have  been  silent 
upon  the  grounds  of  my  resolutions,  you  shall  command 


AVOWALS  35 

them,  if  you  exact  such  a  mark  of  my  esteem  and  con- 
fidence. 

I  have  often  heard  you  lament,  Gosse,  the  ineptitude  of 
the  female  novel,  but  can  you  say,  hand  on  your  heart, 
that  it  is  possible  to  discover  in  the  serial  story  published 
in  the  servant  girl's  magazine  a  page  more  inept  than  that 
I  have  just  read — more  removed  from  human  thought 
and  feeling,  more  trite,  calling  up  no  image  unless  that  of 
two  sleek  rotund  inoffensive  little  animals,  guinea-pigs, 
that — but  I  see  I  distress  you. 

Gosse.  It  is  not  so  much  our  opinions  that  divide  us 
as  our  tempers — yours  allows  you  to  speak  with  studied 
disrespect  of  one  who  once  occupied  the  highest  position 
in  literature  to  which  a  man  can  attain.  You  know  that 
Balzac  was  a  great  admirer  of  Scott,  and  the  fact  makes 
the  change  that  has  come  over  public  taste  regarding 
the  Waverley  novels  incomprehensible  to  me  at  least.  I 
have  listened  to  your  reading  a  declaration  of  love  that 
doubtless  moved  our  grandfathers  and  grandmothers  to 
tears,  and  heard  your  comment  that  it  reminded  you 
of  nothing  unless  perhaps  the  almost  mute  and  wholly 
unnecessary  guinea-pig.  And  what  aggravates  my  posi- 
tion is  that  I  cannot  say  truthfully  that  I  feel  what  you 
have  read  is  not  ridiculous. 

Moore.  There  are  many  more. 

Gosse.  If  you  will  allow  me  to  continue  a  little  while 
longer  I  will  draw  your  attention  to  a  matter  about  which 
you  may  find  it  convenient  to  speak  in  your  essay,  that 
though  we  admire  Shelley's  poetry  we  are  unable  to  ad- 
mire the  poetry  Shelley  admired.  He  admired  Byron, 
and  I'm  afraid  that  nobody  will  be  able  to  explain  to  us 
how  it  was  that  Shelley's  exquisite  ear  took  pleasure  in 
the  versification  of  The  Bride  of  Abydos,  Lara,  The  Corsair, 
and  Childe  Harold.  Shelley's  admiration  and  Goethe's  are 
incomprehensible  unless  we.  allow  that  Byron  possessed 
qualities  in  1820  that  he  does  not  possess  in  1918.     I 


36  AVOWALS 

admit  that  it  is  not  easy  to  believe  that  texts  must  be 
regarded  as  les  petits  vins  du  pays,  wines  that  lose  their 
flavour  after  a  certain  number  of  years;  but  if  we  do  not 
raise  or  lower  poetry  to  the  level  of  the  wine  list,  how  are 
we  to  explain  the  loss  and  gain?  Whereas  Byron  has 
lost,  Shakespeare  has  gained;  like  the  fine  wines  of 
Bordeaux  he  seems  to  have  gathered  flavour  and  aroma, 
and  is  to-day  a  greater  poet  than  he  was  in  the  Elizabethan 
days. 

Moore.  Excellently  well  said,  Gosse;  we  know  that 
Shakespeare  was  rough  on  the  palate  in  1603,  and  that 
for  more  than  fifty  years  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  retained 
their  supremacy. 

Gosse.  After  the  Restoration  they  began  to  lose  their 
fragrance,  and  have  continued  to  lose  it;  and  if  some 
writers  come  down  to  us  deteriorated,  why  should  we  find 
it  hard  to  believe  that  others  have  gained?  And,  since 
change  for  better  or  worse  is  observable  in  all,  is  it  cer- 
tain that  any  writer  is  destined  to  be  read  as  long  as 
there  are  readers  in  England?  The  romantic  movement 
swept  Pope  away,  and  no  reputation  was  more  securely 
established  than  his.  Who  shall  say  that  another  change 
will  not  sweep  Wordsworth  and  Shelley  out  of  popular 
favour? 

Moore.  So  you  think,  Gosse,  there  is  no  standard  of 
taste,  and  that  the  mere  caprice  of  a  generation  is  ac- 
countable, whether  it  admires  Scott  or  Balzac. 

Gosse.  Do  you  think  there  is  one? 

Moore.  I  think  we  find  one  in  antiquity.  Who  can 
doubt  that  Virgil,  Horace  and  Catullus  would  stare  at  us 
very  blankly  if  we  were  to  rouse  them  from  their  sleep  to 
ask  their  opinion  of  Quentin  Durward?  And  it  requires 
no  great  effort  of  the  imagination  to  discover  the  very 
words  with  which  Apuleius  would  answer  us.  He  would 
say:  in  my  day  there  was  a  great  deal  of  Christianity 
creeping  about,  and  we  did  not  think  much  of  it;  but  we 


AVOWALS  37 

did  not  suspect  it  would  lead  you  into  an  admiration  of 
such  dullness  as  Scott.  But  Apuleius  and  Longus,  Virgil, 
Catullus,  Horace  and  Homer,  Sophocles  and  Aristophanes 
would  take  off  their  hats  to  Shakespeare.  Every  one  of 
them  would  understand  Hamlet  and  Macbeth  and  Lear. 
The  Tempest  would  enchant  them,  and  they  would  appre 
ciate  all  our  great  prose  writers — Landor,  De  Quincey, 
Pater.  Why,  therefore,  should  they  fail  to  understand 
our  narrative  prose  if  there  be  any  worth  in  it? 

Gosse.  But  do  you  think  that  an  appeal  to  antiquity 
is  altogether  fair  to  Scott  or  to  any  modern  writer? — 
Modern  life  being  so  different  from  ancient  life.  Do  you 
think  that  Virgil  would  have  understood  Miss  Austen? 

Moore.  You  have  put  an  interesting  question,  for 
which  I  am  obliged  to  you,  and  my  answer  will  fall  out 
naturally  in  the  course  of  the  conversation.  Pride  and 
Prejudice  was  published  many  years  after  it  was  written. 
How  many? 

Gosse.  Fourteen  years,  and  you  can  reckon  on  her  to 
support  your  contention  that  the  literature  that  interests 
the  next  generation  is  not  written  for  money. 

Moore.  I  have  written  my  essay  here  and  there,  a 
manner  of  writing  which  I  acquired  from  Pater  through 
Symons.  It  seems  to  me  that  a  better  occasion  couldn't 
occur  for  giving  it  a  trial.  .  .  .  May  I  read  to  you  what  I 
have  written — a  few  pages  only? 

Gosse.  I  shall  be  delighted  to  listen. 

Moore.  Scott's  centenary  must  have  fallen  flat,  for  I 
remember  nothing  of  it,  but  I  have  a  very  distinct  mem- 
ory of  the  articles  that  celebrated  Miss  Austen's.  Praise 
there  was  in  plenty,  and  if  the  writers  of  the  articles 
could  not  discover  the  qualities  that  stirred  their  en- 
thusiasm, it  was  because  they  were  not  themselves 
writers  of  prose  narrative.  It  may  be  said  that  nobody 
understands  anything  so  intimately  as  the  craft  he  prac- 
tises, and  though  the  praise  of  the  amateur  is  always 


38  AVOWALS 

welcome  it  is  the  criticism  of  the  fellow-craftsman  that 
counts.  The  praise  was  all  right  and  very  pleasing  to 
me,  who  was  nevertheless  puzzled  and  unable  to  explain 
how  the  gentlemen  could  have  written  so  much  and  said 
so  little,  the  subject  being  Miss  Austen,  about  whom  so 
many  interesting  things  might  be  said.  I  should  not 
have  wished  them  to  omit  the  obvious  that  Miss  Austen 
was  a  delightful  writer  who  described  the  society  of 
which  she  was  part  and  parcel;  it  was  necessary  to  say 
as  much,  of  course,  but  it  was  not  easy  to  see  why  this 
very  trite  appreciation  should  be  expanded  into  many 
columns  when  so  much  remained  unwritten  about  this 
delightful  writer  who,  etc.  After  having  mentioned  for 
the  tenth  time  that  she  described  the  society  of  which 
she  was  part  and  parcel,  I  should  have  liked  the  critics  to 
have  pointed  out  that  Miss  Austen  was  the  inventor  of 
a  new  medium  of  literary  expression;  it  will  no  doubt 
come  as  a  surprise  to  the  critics  to  hear  from  me  that  Miss 
Austen  was  the  inventor  of  the  formula  whereby  domes- 
tic life  may  be  described;  and  that  every  one  of  us,  with- 
out exception.  Balzac  and  Tourgueneff  as  much  as  Mrs 
Henry  Wood  and  Anthony  Trollope,  is  indebted  to  her. 

Gosse.  A  perfect  blossom.     Her  craft 

Moore  (reading).  A  great  deal  has  been  written  about 
her  craft  which  we  must  allow  to  be  good,  and  it  is  won- 
derful when  we  remember  that  she  discovered  it.  Nor  is 
it  too  much  to  say  that  she  was  her  own  potter,  decora- 
tor, vintager,  and  that  her  jars  were  mostly  well  shapen, 
the  painting  witful  and  the  wine  excellent,  without  doubt 
the  purest  our  island  produces — a  delicious  wine,  whole- 
some, palatable,  one  that  can  be  drunk  with  pleasure 
by  all,  especially  by  men  and  women  of  letters,  by  whom 
it  is  especially  recommended.  Though  divided  on  all 
other  points,  it  seems  we  are  united  on  this,  and  were 
not  my  rooms  too  small  to  contain  the  entire  sodality, 
it  would  have  pleased  me  to  invite  all  here  and  put  a 


AVOWALS  39 

certain  matter  to  the  vote — the  only  certain  way  of 
settling  anything;  but  as  that  is  impossible  I  have  taken 
upon  myself  the  responsibility  of  speaking  in  the  name 
of  the  sodality;  we  are  agreed,  I  say,  that  if  the  great 
dead  were  to  reawaken,  the  Austen  wine  might  be  offered 
to  Virgil,  Catullus,  Horace,  Longus,  Apuleius  and  Petro- 
nius  Arbiter  without  fear  that  they  would  run  to  the 
window  to  puke,  making  wry  faces. 

It  is  many  years  since  I  have  read  Pride  and  Prejudice, 
but  the  two  principal  characters,  Mr  Collins  and  Eliza- 
beth, are  still  clear  to  me.  Mr  and  Mrs  Bennett  still 
keep  a  place  in  my  recollection,  and,  unless  my  memory 
retains  the  good  and  forgets  the  false,  this  book  tends 
towards  the  vase  rather  than  the  wash-tub,  which  is  rare 
in  English  novels;  but  it  will  be  safer  for  me  to  speak 
of  Sense  and  Sensibility,  which  I  read  lately,  for  in  that 
work  it  often  seemed  to  me  that  Miss  Austen  is  at  her 
best  and  at  her  worst. 

Her  subject  is  what  is  known  as  County,  and  her  nar- 
rative opens  as  it  should  open  in  a  large  commodious 
house  situated  in  the  middle  of  a  part  as  far  as  possible 
from  the  high  road.  Miss  Austen's  intention  in  this  book 
is  to  present  a  highly  strung,  romantic  girl  who  believes 
the  time  for  love  is  twenty  or  before,  for  at  two-and- 
twenty  young  women  have  passed  the  bloom  of  youth. 
Marianne  is,  of  course,  certain  that  whosoever  loves 
once  can  never  love  again.  But  in  setting  forth  the 
mental  attitude  of  her  young  people,  it  seems  to  me  that 
Miss  Austen  falls  into  something  like  the  sententiousness 
of  Mr  Waverley.  She  fails  to  see  that  the  writing  of  a 
long  exordium  of  common-sense  is  inadequate  exposition, 
and  that  many  pages  would  be  needed  to  lead  the  reader 
into  a  gradual  comprehension  of  the  subject,  that  Elinor 
represents  common-sense  and  Marianne  romance.  States 
of  soul  cannot  be  conveyed  in  speeches,  and  in  speeches 


40  AVOWALS 

delivered  by  girls  whose  acquaintance  we  have  only  just 
made. 

Of  his  sense  and  goodness,  continued  Elinor,  no  one 
can,  I  think,  be  in  doubt  who  has  seen  him  often  enough 
to  engage  him  in  unreserved  conversation.  The  excellence 
of  his  understanding  and  his  principles  can  be  concealed 
only  by  that  shyness  which  too  often  keeps  him  silent. 
You  know  enough  of  him  to  do  justice  to  his  solid  worth. 
But  of  his  minuter  propensities,  as  you  call  them,  you 
have,  from  peculiar  circumstances,  been  kept  more  ig- 
norant than  myself.  He  and  I  have  been  at  times  thrown 
a  good  deal  together,  while  you  have  been  wholly  engrossed 
on  the  most  affectionate  principle  by  my  mother.  I  have 
seen  a  great  deal  of  him,  have  studied  his  sentiments,  and 
heard  his  opinions  on  subjects  of  literature  and  taste; 
and  upon  the  whole  I  venture  to  pronounce  that  his 
mind  is  well  informed,  his  enjoyment  of  books  extensively 
great,  his  imagination  lively,  his  observation  just  and 
correct,  and  his  taste  delicate  and  pure.  His  abilities 
in  every  respect  improve  as  much  upon  acquaintance 
as  his  manners  and  person.  At  first  sight  his  address 
is  certainly  not  striking,  and  his  person  can  hardly  be 
called  handsome  till  the  expression  of  his  eyes,  which 
are  uncommonly  good,  and  the  general  sweetness  of  his 
countenance  is  seen.  At  present  I  know  him  so  well 
that  I  think  him  really  handsome,  or,  at  least,  almost 
so.  What  say  you,  Marianne?  I  shall  very  soon  think 
him  handsome,  Elinor,  if  I  don't  now.  When  you  tell 
me  to  love  him  as  a  brother  I  shall  no  more  see  perfection 
in  his  face  than  I  do  now  in  his  heart.  Elinor  then 
tried  to  explain  the  real  state  of  the  case  to  her  sister. 
I  don't  attempt  to  deny,  said  she,  that  I  think  very  highly 
of  him,  that  I  greatly  esteem,  that  I  like  him.  Marianne 
here  burst  forth  with  indignation : 

Esteem  him,  like  him,  cold-hearted  Elinor,  oh,  worse 


AVOWALS  41 

than  cold-hearted,  ashamed  of  being  otherwise.  Use 
those  words  again,  and  I'll  leave  the  room  this  moment. 

Elinor's  resemblance  to  Mr  Waverley  in  this  speech  is 
very  striking,  and  I  confess  that  I  thought  Miss  Austen 
had  succumbed  to  the  influence  of  her  time,  and  was  about 
to  put  the  book  aside,  but  continued  it,  and  fortunately, 
for  as  soon  as  the  family  reached  Devon,  I  began  to 
understand  how  the  confused  opening  had  come  about: 
Miss  Austen  had  found  herself  unable  to  resist  the  tempta- 
tion to  include  a  scene  not,  strictly  speaking,  in  her  subject 
— a  grave  fault  with  which  we  must,  however,  sympathise, 
the  scene  being  one  of  the  wittiest  in  literature:  a  dialogue 
between  the  heir,  Mrs  Dashwood's  son,  and  his  young 
wife,  as  to  the  amount  Dashwood  shall  contribute  to 
his  mother  and  sisters'  maintenance.  The  omission  of 
this  scene  would  have  been  a  loss,  but  the  book  would  have 
gained  in  shape,  and  if  the  pages  occupied  by  the  dialogue 
had  been  given  over  to  an  exposition  of  Elinor  and 
Marianne's  different  mental  attitudes  Sense  and  Sensi- 
bility would  have  gained  as  a  whole  though  it  had  lost 
something. 

Dear,  dear  Northlands,  Marianne  asks;  when  shall  I 
cease  to  regret  you!  When  learn  to  feel  at  home  else- 
where !  Oh !  Happy  house,  could  you  know  what  I  suffer 
now  in  viewing  you  from  this  spot,  from  whence  perhaps 
I  may  view  you  no  more!  And  you,  ye  well-known  trees! 
you  will  continue  the  same.  No  leaf  will  decay  because 
we  are  removed,  or  any  branch  become  motionless,  though 
we  can  observe  you  no  longer!  No,  you  will  continue  the 
same,  unconscious  of  the  pleasure  or  the  regret  you  occa- 
sion, and  insensible  of  any  change  to  those  who  walk  un- 
der your  shade!    But  who  will  remain  to  enjoy  you? 

This  sententiousness — is  it  really  sensibility? — is  con- 
tinued for  about  forty  pages,  and  is  not  dropped  until  the 
sisters  go  with  their  mother  to  the  Devonshire  cottage, 
and  our  attention  has  relaxed  considerably;    but  Miss 


42  AVOWALS 

Austen  regains  it  when  a  young  man  appears  whom  Mar- 
ianne recognises  as  the  one  she  has  been  craving  for  ever 
since  her  girlhood,  and  within  a  very  few  weeks  she  is  con- 
vinced that  he  is  the  only  one  worth  living  for.  At  last  the 
theme  becomes  clear,  and  we  perceive  that  the  author's 
intention  is  that  Marianne  shall  be  cheated  of  her  desire, 
and  marry  in  the  end  a  man  whose  years  once  seemed 
to  put  him  among  those  that  can  no  longer  hope  to 
inspire  passion.  Passion  alone  is  valid,  so  Marianne 
thinks,  and  we  begin  to  comprehend  the  scheme,  which 
is  that  the  young  man  must  break  with  her;  it  is 
essential  to  the  story  that  he  should,  and  the  bringing 
about  of  the  rupture,  I  said,  will  put  the  skill  of  the 
narrator  to  the  finest  test.  The  story  will  begin  to  creak 
in  its  joints  if  the  greatest  care  be  not  taken.  In  about 
three  weeks  the  young  man  expresses  a  desire  to  leave 
the  neighbourhood,  and  the  reason  he  gives  for  his  return 
to  London  is  not  satisfactory;  indeed,  his  manner  alarms 
Marianne,  and  her  disquiet  is  increased  by  many  little 
incidents.  So  far  so  good,  but  the  question  has  to  be 
answered :  is  the  author  to  take  the  reader  into  her  confi- 
dence and  tell  that  the  young  man  has  flirted  with  Mar- 
ianne merely  to  pass  the  time  away,  his  thoughts  being 
fixed  on  a  rich  marriage,  or  is  the  author  going  to  keep 
the  secret  from  the  reader,  thereby  appealing  to  that  sense 
of  curiosity  which  is  in  everyone?  Strange  as  it  may 
seem,  Miss  Austen  chose  to  appeal  to  the  curiosity  of  the 
reader,  and  we  are  well  advanced  in  the  novel  before  we 
hear  that  the  young  gentleman  has  succeeded  in  allying 
himself  to  money.  The  motive  of  curiosity  seems  to  me 
to  lie  a  little  outside  of  her  art,  and  it  would  have  been 
better  for  her  to  have  taken  the  reader  into  her  confidence 
and  told  that  the  young  man  was  seeking  a  rich  marriage, 
and  had  no  intention  of  applying  his  life  to  the  worship 
of  a  poor  girl;  and  later  on  Miss  Austen's  inexperience  in 
her  craft  leads  her  into  a  blunder  that  cannot  be  condoned. 


AVOWALS  43 

She  brings  back  the  young  man  after  his  marriage  to  tell 
Elinor  that  he  is  very  sorry,  and  my  heart  failed  me  when 
I  saw  the  scene  rising  up  in  the  narrative,  and  prayed 
that  it  might  not  come  to  pass.  But  she  was  the  first, 
a  Giotto  among  women,  and  when  she  wrote  there  was 
no  prose  narrative  for  her  to  learn  from.  It  is  easier  for 
us  to  avoid  these  mistakes.  A  writer  of  inferior  talent — 
shall  we  say  Maupassant? — would  have  known  that  the 
scene  could  not  be  written,  for  there  are  scenes  in  life 
that  cannot  be  written,  even  if  they  can  be  proved  to 
have  happened.  The  writer  must  choose  what  can  be 
written,  and  a  worse  exhibition  of  skill  than  this  scene 
is  not  discoverable  in  literature.  The  young  man  apolo- 
gised, blubbered,  and  went  away,  and  with  his  disappear- 
ance from  the  book  my  fault-finding  ends. 

Remember  that  the  theme  of  the  book  is  a  disappoint- 
ment in  love,  and  never  was  one  better  written,  more 
poignant,  more  dramatic.  We  all  know  how  terrible 
these  disappointments  are,  and  how  they  crush  and  break 
up  life,  for  the  moment  reducing  it  to  dust;  the  sufferer 
neither  sees  nor  hears,  but  walks  like  a  somnambulist 
through  an  empty  world.  So  it  is  with  Marianne,  who 
cannot  give  up  hope,  and  the  Dashwoods  go  up  to  London 
in  search  of  the  young  man;  and  every  attempt  is  made  to 
recapture  him,  and  every  effort  wrings  her  heart.  She 
hears  of  him,  but  never  sees  him,  till  at  last  she  perceives 
him  in  a  back  room,  and  at  once,  her  whole  countenance 
blazing  forth  with  a  sudden  delight,  she  would  have 
moved  towards  him  instantly  had  not  her  sister  laid  her 
hand  on  her  arm,  and  in  the  page  and  a  half  that  follows 
Miss  Austen  gives  us  all  the  agony  of  passion  the  human 
heart  can  feel;  she  was  the  first;  and  none  has  written  the 
scene  that  we  all  desire  to  write  as  truthfully  as  she  has; 
when  Balzac  and  Tourgueneff  rewrote  it  they  wrote  more 
elaborately,  but  their  achievements  are  not  greater.  In 
Miss  Austen  the  means  are  as  simple  as  the  result  is 


44  AVOWALS 

amazing.  Listen  to  it  again.  A  young  girl  of  twenty, 
jilted,  comes  up  to  London  with  her  mother  and  sister, 
and  she  sees  her  lover  at  an  assembly;  he  comes  forward 
and  addresses  a  few  words  more  to  her  sister  than  to 
herself  within  hearing  of  a  dozen  people,  and  it  is  here 
that  we  find  the  burning  human  heart  in  English  prose 
narrative  for  the  first,  and,  alas,  for  the  last  time. 

Miss  Austen's  imagination  has  not  spent  itself  in  this 
supreme  scene.  She  can  develop  her  motive,  and  the 
narrative  is  continued  amid  gossiping  women  coming  and 
going  into  the  house  taken  for  the  season;  the  drawing- 
room  is  never  empty;  in  and  out  the  visitors  come  an  I 
go,  asking  questions  about  Marianne's  marriage.  Each  of 
these  questions  is  like  a  burning  knife  thrust  into  the 
girl,  and  she  has  to  keep  a  steady  face  upon  it  all.  She 
has  to  bear  with  it  all,  listening  to  the  chatter  till  she 
wishes  herself  dead,  at  all  events  in  some  silent  world,  and 
what  is  so  admirable  is  that  while  the  reader's  heart  is 
wrung  with  pity  for  the  girl,  he  is  amused  by  as  good 
chatter  as  has  ever  been  written,  and  a  great  deal  of  good 
chatter  has  been  written  by  the  great  writers,  for  the 
power  of  writing  chatter  is  the  sign  manual  of  the  great 
writer.  Perhaps  the  French  word  boniment  will  explain 
my  meaning  better;  chatter,  being  an  abstract  word,  does 
not  express  as  much  as  boniment.  The  word  boniment  is 
associated  with  the  showman,  and  the  word  recalls  to 
our  mind  the  rapid,  almost  incoherent,  talk  of  the  man 
who  stands  at  the  end  of  the  booth,  crying:  walk  up, 
walk  up  and  see  my  show!  Rabelais  was  a  great  master 
of  patter,  and  next  to  him  is  Shakespeare.  Balzac,  too, 
could  write  good  patter,  but  Mrs  Jennings'  patter  in 
Sense  and  Sensibility  is  as  good  as  any.  She  sometimes,  it 
is  true,  includes  an  important  statement  in  the  patter,  one 
that  is  necessary  for  the  comprehension  of  the  narrative, 
and  this  to  me  is  a  mistake,  for  the  pleasure  we  find  in 
patter  is  merely  the  pleasure  of  words  run  together  rapidly. 


AVOWALS  45 

You  have  not  read  Sense  and  Sensibility  for  a  long  while, 
Gosse,  and  will  let  me  read  some  of  Miss  Austen's  patter, 
Well  my  dear,  'tis  a  true  saying  about  an  ill  wind,  for 
it  will  be  all  the  better  for  Colonel  Brandon.  He  will 
have  her  at  last;  ay,  that  he  will.  Mind  me,  now,  if  they 
ain't  married  by  midsummer.  Lord!  how  he'll  chuckle 
over  this  news!  I  hope  he  will  come  to-night.  It  will  be 
all  to  one  a  better  match  for  your  sister.  Two  thousand 
a  year  without  debt  or  drawback — except  the  little  love- 
child,  indeed;  ay,  I  had  forgot  her;  but  she  may  be 
'prenticed  out  at  a  small  cost,  and  then  what  does  it 
signify?  Delaford  is  a  nice  place,  I  can  tell  you;  exactly 
what  I  call  a  nice  old-fashioned  place,  full  of  comforts  and 
conveniences;  quite  shut  in  with  great  garden  walls  that 
are  covered  with  the  best  fruit  trees  in  the  country;  and 
such  a  mulberry-tree  in  one  corner!  Lord!  how  Char- 
lotte and  I  did  stuff  the  only  time  we  were  there!  Then 
there  is  a  dovecote,  some  delightful  stewponds,  and  a  very 
pretty  canal;  and  everything,  in  short,  that  one  could 
wish  for;  and,  moreover,  it  is  close  to  the  church,  and 
only  a  quarter  of  a  mile  from  the  turnpike  road,  so  'tis 
never  dull,  for  if  you  only  go  and  sit  up  in  an  old  yew 
arbour  behind  the  house,  you  may  see  all  the  carraiges 
that  pass  along.  Oh!  'tis  a  nice  place!  A  butcher's 
hard  by  in  the  village,  and  the  parsonage-house  within  a 
stone's  throw.  To  my  fancy,  a  thousand  times  prettier 
than  Barton  Park,  where  they  are  forced  to  send  three 
miles  for  their  meat,  and  have  not  a  nearer  neighbour 
than  your  mother.  Well,  I  should  spirit  up  the  Colonel 
as  soon  as  I  can.  One  shoulder  of  mutton,  you  know, 
drives  another  down.  If  we  can  but  put  Willoughby  out 
of  her  head ! 


46  AVOWALS 


CHAPTER  2. 


MAID.  Mr  George  Moore. 
Gosse.  My  dear  Moore,  how  unexpected  and  how 
delightful. 

Moore.  It  is  pleasant  to  hear  you  say  so  for,  truth  to 
tell,  I  was  not  quite  sure  that  I  should  be  welcome  on  a 
day  not  set  apart  for  visitors.  But  since  I  am  so  fortu- 
nate I  will  admit  that  I  am  glad  to  catch  you  in  your 
wont,  passing  your  time  on  your  great  balcony,  as  large 
as  a  parlour,  reading,  a  shawl  wrapped  about  your  knees. 

Gosse.  You  know  the  proverb:  whether  May  come 
early  or  late,  'tis  sure  to  make  the  old  cow  quake. 

Moore.  I  like  these  homely  proverbs,  and  as  I  cannot 
be  among  our  lanes  and  downs  I  come  to  Regent's  Park, 
so  typical  of  the  London  of  our  generation,  and  to  your 
house,  typical  of  our  ideas.  All  the  way  up  the  stairs  it 
breathes  the  delightful  seventies :  Rossetti,  Madox  Brown 
and  the  residue.  You  were  associated  with  the  Pre- 
Raphaelites. 

Gosse.  Associated  with  them  in  the  poetical  movement 
of  the  seventies,  and  my  wife,  who  was  a  painter,  knew 
them  all,  even  that  remote  one  who  died  last  year. 

Moore.  And  before  you  met  the  Pre-Raphaelite  move- 
ment you  were  a  Plymouth  Brother,  another  instinct  of 
the  English  mind.  I  would  be  as  English  as  you,  Gosse, 
but  to  be  you  I  should  have  to  renounce  a  great  deal — the 
Nouvelle  Athenes.  It  was  in  one  of  my  adventures  from 
that  cafe  to  London  that  I  brought  my  youthful  drama 
in  blank  verse,  Martin  Luther,  to  a  house  overlooking  a 
canal,  with  a  screen  of  poplar-trees  between  it  and  the 
barges.  But  Delamere  Terrace  is  almost  forgotten,  and 
I  can  only  think  of  you  here  in  Regent's  Park,  though 
my  instinct  tells  me  that  it  was  not  you  but  your  wife 
and  daughters  who  discovered  this  Georgian  house.    You 


AVOWALS  47 

owe  a  great  deal  to  your  wife  and  daughters.  You  will 
never  know  how  much  unless  you  survive  them,  which — 
but  the  conversation  has  taken  a  turn  too  gloomy  for  this 
wide  balcony,  overlooking  the  park.  Did  you  notice  that 
breeze,  lilac-laden?  In  a  few  days  it  will  bring  the  odour 
of  hawthorn.     But  what  book  are  you  reading? 

Gosse.  Lamb's  Essays. 

Moore.  You  know  them  always,  but  Lamb  was  no 
more  than  a  name  to  me  until  I  found  his  book  in  my 
secretary's  hand  and  took  it  from  her;  and  could  do  no 
writing  that  morning. 

Gosse.  So  you  mentioned  once  before,  but  despite  your 
admiration  you  did  not  pursue  your  new  acquaintance 
into  his  correspondence,  as  I  begged  you  to  do. 

Moore.  We  must  allow  many  good  dishes  to  pass  by  if 
we  would  taste  of  a  few  fully. 

Gosse.  A  frail  excuse. 

Moore.  A  second  is  not  lacking.  I  would  not  risk 
blurring  the  impression  the  essays  have  made;  you  tell 
me  the  correspondence  will  but  increase  it;  but  there 
is  no  need  at  present  for  increase,  nor  possibility,  for  did 
I  not  say  to  myself,  and  not  later  than  yesterday:  no 
literature  has  a  Lamb  like  ours,  not  even  Greek,  adding 
whimsically:  not  till  it  became  canine.  You  do  not 
understand?  You  should,  for  the  variant  is  Swinburne; 
with  an  additional  turn  given  to  it.  What,  not  yet?  Is 
there  not  a  lamb  in  New  Testament?  Now  you've  got  it, 
and  we  can  return  to  Lamb,  who  appears  in  your  history 
as  the  author  of  a  pastoral,  Rosamond  Grey.  The  work 
came  upon  me  with  something  of  a  shock,  and  I  am  still 
trying  to  associate  him  with  Corydon,  Amaryllis,  Sylvan- 
der  and  Rosalind,  trying  to  see  him  among  the  downs, 
in  a  glade,  but  in  my  imagination  he  remains  always  in 
Fountain  Court.  You  would  have  done  well  to  have 
held  your  tongue  about  that  pastoral.  But  his  association, 
however  brief  it  may  have  been,  with  shepherds  and 


48  AVOWALS 

sheep,  brings  us  back  easily  to  our  own  sheep,  or,  to  be 
still  more  exact,  my  dear  Gosse,  to  your  own  yoe  lamb — 
that  English  genius  expressed  itself  so  fully  in  poetry  that 
very  little  was  left  over  to  sustain  and  dignify  the  other 
arts.  It  would  cost  Sidney  Colvin  a  sleepless  night  were 
he  to  hear  us,  for  he  thinks  that  Stevenson  did  not  fall 
to  his  real  job  in  life  till  he  began  to  write  stories  in 
Samoa. 

Gosse.  I  don't  think  that  Colvin  would  allow  that 
Stevenson  was  ever  unaware  of  the  direction  in  which 
Stevenson's  genius  lay,  not  even  in  those  early  years 
when  Stevenson  reminded  me  of  some  wonderful  butterfly 
hovering  over  every  blossom,  but  never  able  to  choose 
which  flower  he  should  woo;  as  capricious  as  a  butterfly, 
but  without  the  instinct.  He  busied  himself  in  turns 
with  verse- writing  and  drama;  he  was  not  certain  that 
biography  did  not  attract  him,  and  he  read  Hazlitt  and 
studied  the  strategy  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington.  The 
Duke  was  even  advertised  for  publication,  but  he  was 
abandoned — both  the  Duke  and  Hazlitt.  And  soon  after 
his  thoughts  turned  to  Scottish  history,  but  finding  no 
subject  that  pleased  him  he  determined  to  stand  for  the 
Edinburgh  professorship  of  literature.  And  you  know 
that  he  proposed  to  me  that  we  should  rewrite  in  con- 
junction the  picturesque  murder  cases. 

Moore.  His  inveterate  bad  health  must  have  shattered 
his  literary  instinct  if  he  had  one. 

Gosse.  It  is  hard  to  imagine  him  with  a  good  con- 
stitution, and  I  am  not  certain  that  bad  health  was  not 
part  of  his  genius,  which,  it  must  be  confessed,  often 
seems  not  a  little  hectic  and  feverish. 

Moore.  I  think  I  can  foresee  the  career  of  a  fairly 
healthy  Stevenson:  endless  travelling  in  search  of  ad- 
ventures; Tibet,  China  and  Japan,  Arabia,  furnishing  in 
turn  the  mental  stimulus  that  he  required.  If  Nature 
had  given  him  health  we  should  have  had  the  most 


AVOWALS  49 

wonderful  tales  of  travel  ever  written,  interspersed  with 
the  quaintest  character  sketches.  But  good  health  would 
not  have  given  him  what  he  did  not  bring  into  the  world 
— a  sympathetic  mind.  He  was  an  eye-man,  a  wanderer, 
an  Autolycus,  picking  up  halfpence  and  with  exquisite 
craft  turning  them  into  guineas. 

Gosse.  A  superior  kind  of  Loti. 

Moore.  So  superior  that  no  comparison  is  possible. 

Gosse.  In  this  much  I  agree  with  you  that  he  never 
really  found — if  you  will  allow  me  two  words  of  French, 
son  cadre. 

Moore.  Sidney  Colvin  pushed  him  into  the  task  of 
evolving  stories  out  of  an  inner  entity  that  did  not  exist. 
And  it  is  all  so  plain  that  I  am  surprised  that  criticism 
is  still  at  wrangle  about  him.  Are  not  his  letters  those 
of  a  man  who  could  not  write  stories?  He  had  all  the 
literary  gifts,  but  one  drop  of  story  poisoned  the  lump. 

Gosse.  I  think  I  can  tell  you  why  he  failed  to  write 
stories;  he  had  little  power  to  heighten  the  interest  with 
anecdotes,  and 

Moore.  A  very  good  point  that  is  of  yours,  Gosse, 
better  perhaps  than  you  think,  for  the  real  gift  of  the 
tale-teller  lies  in  the  power  to  excite  and  illuminate  by 
means  of  anecdote.     Balzac 

Gosse.  Balzac's  invention  was  always  prompt.  But  I 
was  going  to  give  another  reason  for  the  dryness  of 
Stevenson's  stories:  the  absence  of  his  own  enchanting 
presence  from  them,  one  that  I  shall  never  forget,  else 
I  should  have  stopped  you  before,  for  if  you  do  not  pro- 
pose to  carry  this  discussion  into  our  own  time,  I  think 
we  had  better  turn  our  attention  to  Disraeli  and  Lytton. 

Moore.  Lytton's  novels  were  among  the  first  I  read, 
and  The  Last  of  the  Barons  came  to  me  highly  recom- 
mended by  my  companions  in  whooping-cough.  As  you 
may  remember,  whooping-cough  allows  nothing  to  stay  on 
the  stomach;  one  is  obliged  to  fly  from  the  room  constant- 


50  AVOWALS 

ly,  and  every  time  I  returned  I  came  upon  people  and 
events  in  the  story  that  I  could  not  connect  with  those  I 
had  left  a  few  moments  before.  But  my  companions  said 
it  was  a  great  story,  and  I  read  on  day  after  day,  under- 
standing nothing  of  what  I  was  reading,  dreading  questions 
and  expecting  them,  for  it  had  begun  to  seem  to  me  that  I 
was  being  watched.  So  you've  finished  the  book?  said 
one.  Did  you  enjoy  the  story?  Very  much,  I  replied. 
Which  part  did  you  like  the  best?  another  asked.  It 
was  all  very  good,  I  answered;  and  all  that  day  the 
laughers  did  not  cease  to  tease  me  (how  little  the  word 
tease  expresses  the  agony  those  pin-pricks  caused,  so 
soft,  so  tender,  so  susceptible  to  pain  are  we  in  child- 
hood) till,  wearied  of  teasing,  maybe,  or  thinking  my  skin 
had  hardened  and  could  be  pierced  no  longer,  they  be- 
came curious  to  hear  how  I  would  take  the  news  that 
every  time  I  left  the  room  my  marker  was  advanced  some 
twenty  or  thirty  pages. 

Gosse.  Now  that  we  have  got  the  literary  history  of 
your  whooping-cough,  it  will  be  interesting  to  proceed 
into  that  of  your  measles;  you  had  the  measles,  if  not 
the  chicken-pox,  and  must  have  read  many  books  during 
your  convalescence.  Proceed  by  all  means;  let  us  have 
the  complete  history  of  your  development. 

Moore.  I'm  afraid  I'm  becoming  a  bore,  Gosse,  and 
had  better  bid  you  good-bye,  thanking  you,  of  course,  for 
your  kindness  in  listening. 

Gosse.  You  are  not  a  protagonist  of  humour  in  the 
novel,  but  you  would  not  root  it  out  of  life.  Sit  down. 
You  read  The  Last  Days  of  Pompeii,  and  were  captured, 
as  we  all  were,  by  Glaucus,  who  behaved  very  decorously 
towards  a  blind  girl. 

Moore.  I  owe  to  Pelham  a  certain  whimsicality  of 
mind  that  the  years  have  never  rubbed  away,  and  I  be- 
lieve the  tone  of  the  book  to  have  influenced  thousands. 
Pelham  is  walking  one  day  with  a  friend,  who  begs  him 


AVOWALS  51 

suddenly  to  cross  the  roadway,  saying  he  cannot  bring 
himself  to  speak  or  even  to  recognise  as  an  acquaint- 
ance a  man  whom  he  had  just  caught  sight  of  coming 
towards  them,  and  on  looking  up  to  see  who  it  is  that 
causes  so  much  aversion,  Pelham  sees  a  man  that  every- 
body in  London  would  like  to  be  seen  talking  to. 
Why  do  you  not  wish  to  speak  to  him?  Pelham  asks, 
and  as  soon  as  they  are  safely  on  the  other  side  of  the 
street  the  friend  answers:  the  man  you  saw  coming 
towards  us  dined  with  me  last  week,  and  on  my  apolo- 
gising to  him  for  an  unaccountable  oversight  on  the 
part  of  my  cook,  who  substituted  ordinary  vinegar  for 
Chile  with  the  turbot,  replied  that  he  did  not  know  the 
difference  between  one  vinegar  and  another.  I  feel  that 
I  have  missed  the  end  of  Lytton's  sentence,  but  the  be- 
ginning you  can  take  as  being  quoted  correctly.  But 
why  should  blame  fall  on  the  cook?  Pelham's  friend 
should  have  apologised  for  his  butler's  mistake.  Turbot 
is  not  boiled  in  vinegar,  and  the  passage  exhibits  Lytton 
as  a  sciolist  rather  than  as  an  adept  in  the  art  of  living, 
a  man  of  letters  aping  a  man  of  fashion,  and  doing  it 
fairly  well,  but  only  fairly.  At  fifteen  one  overlooks 
detail,  and  Pelham's  friend  was  clearly  one  to  be  imitated, 
an  exemplar  that,  methinks,  has  found  many  noisy  ad- 
herents in  our  own  time,  every  one  of  whom  would  be 
hurt  and  shocked  to  find  himself  traced  to  such  a  humble 
origin  as  Lytton. 

Moore.  But  are  not  all  origins  humble?  Every  one  of 
us  begins  in  bad  taste  and  most  men  remain  in  it. 

Gosse.  Nobody  had  greater  successes  with  the  public 
than  Lytton.  Every  book  he  wrote  was  a  success ;  some 
of  course,  were  more  successful  than  others,  but  all  were 
successes.  f 

Moore.  Another  book  of  his  roused  my  imagination, 
and  in  much  the  same  way  as  Pelham,  The  Parisians. 
Lytton's  death  interrupted  the  story  whilst  a  party  of 


5£  AVOWALS 

friends  in  the  beleaguered  city  were  about  to  dine  off  a 
pet  dog  whose  master  had  endured  hunger  as  long  as  he 
could,  sharing  his  crusts  with  Fox,  but  at  last  it  became 
apparent  that  if  Fox  were  not  eaten  at  once  he  would 
not  be  worth  eating  later. 

Gosse.  Was  Fox  killed  before  the  story  stopped? 

Moore.  I've  forgotten,  but  the  meal  was  not  described, 
which  is  a  pity,  for  Lytton's  talent  revealed  itself  in  such 
scenes  of  comedy  rather  than  in  discourses  on  truth  and 
beauty.  Another  great  event  of  my  youth,  and  of  yours 
too,  Gosse,  I'm  sure,  was  Money,  at  the  Old  Prince  of 
Wales'  Theatre,  when  the  Bancrofts  owned  it.  Do  you 
remember  Coghlan  and  Miss  Foote  in  the  act  in  which  the 
will  is  read,  as  good  an  act  of  comedy  as  ever  was  written 
if  it  resembles  my  memory  of  it.  If  you  have  forgotten  it 
I  never  have,  nor  a  certain  short  front  scene,  played  by 
George  Honey  and  his  wife.  The  theatre  never  interested 
you;  but  there  was  a  Lamb  in  me;  and  if  I  had  been 
taken  round  after  a  performance  of  Money  and  introduced 
to  Lytton  I  should  have  fallen  on  my  knees. 

Gosse.  Then  it's  lucky  you  weren't,  for  the  memory 
would  have  been  disagreeable.  Have  you  no  memory 
of  Disraeli? 

Moore.  None.  My  father  asked  me  to  read  Vivian 
Grey,  but  it  left  no  impression  on  my  mind,  perhaps  be- 
cause he  asked  me  to  read  it;  and  my  memory  of  the 
unendurable  silliness  of  Henrietta  Temple  prevented  me 
from  reading  Lothair,  though  there  were  many  in  the 
Nouvelle  Athenes  who  wished  to  hear  what  I  thought  of 
Lothair.  There  are  so  many  wonderful  books  to  read,  I 
answered  Villiers — Villiers  de  Pile  Adam.  Are  there?  his 
troubled  eyes  seemed  to  ask,  and  I  added:  there  is  your 
Eve.  La  nouvelle  edition  est  epuisee,  on  m'a  dit  hier  de 
passer  a  la  caisse.  Enfin,  si  apres  tout  la  chance  est  venue 
a  moi;  and  sweeping  a  lock  of  hair  from  his  face  he  re- 
peated :  si  apres  tout  la  chance  est  venue  a  moi.     Villiers's 


AVOWALS  53 

unhappy  eyes  haunt  me  as  none  others  do,  and  the 
memory  of  them  is  very  dear  to  me.  You  have  similar 
memories,  Gosse.  You  remember  the  great  men  you  met 
in  Denmark  and  Norway.  The  poet  warns  us  to  gather 
our  memories  while  we  may;  he  should  have  added:  for 
the  time  will  come  when  memories  will  seem  like  hips 
and  haws,  hardly  worth  gathering.  The  feminine  trouble 
is  the  first  to  disappear;  we  are  glad  in  our  folly,  and 
afterwards  regret  it,  for  we  are  now  altogether  without 
appointments  except  those  we  make  with  our  publishers; 
a  forlorn  twain  surely,  having  read  too  much  and  seen 
too  many  pictures,  and  though  the  world's  shows  amuse 
us  still  we  are  weary  of  them  and  perhaps  a  little  of  our- 
selves. 

Gosse.  If  you  are  a  little  weary  of  yourself  it  is  because 
you  have  lost  the  habit  of  reading;  if  you  read  it  is  to  get 
something  from  the  book,  rather  than  for  the  book  itself; 
and  if  I  may  hazard  a  very  personal  criticism  of  your  life, 
I  should  say  that  you  never  cared  for  painting  or  music  or 
literature,  but  used  them  as  a  means  of  self-development. 

Moore.  Even  though  what  you  say  be  true,  am  I 
different  from  anybody  else?  Can  we  care  for  anything 
except  as  we  care  for  food  and  drink?  But  I  agree  with 
you,  Gosse,  in  this  much,  that  I  have  invested  too  much 
in  art.  You  have  been  wiser  or  more  fortunate  in  the 
conduct  of  your  life.  You  do  not  stand  alone;  there  are 
your  wife,  your  daughters,  your  son  and  little  grandchild. 
This  solid  Georgian  house  is  charged  with  memories  of 
your  life  and  theirs.  You  have  nothing  to  complain  of, 
Gosse;  a  very  fortunate  man  you  have  been  in  your 
literature,  in  your  wife  and  children.  The  House  of 
Lords  fell  into  your  lap  at  the  right  moment,  when  you 
began  to  tire  of  writing  articles  for  necessary  money. 
And  with  the  House  of  Lords  came  other  windfalls. 
Indeed  the  only  ill  luck  that  I  can  remember  is  when  the 
age-limit  obliged  you  to  leave  the  Lords.    Even  that 


54  AVOWALS 

retirement  was  not  an  unmixed  bitterness,  for  it  did  not 
come  before  you  left  behind  you  a  permanent  memory. 
You  are  still  the  literary  force  behind  the  House.  It 
has  begun  to  write,  and  every  lord  that  writes  is  your 
debtor  for  an  article.  And  so  are  we,  Gosse.  We  too 
are  indebted  to  the  lords  for  many  pages  of  pure,  beau- 
tiful English  prose;  if  not  music-makers  themselves,  the 
the  lords  are  at  least  the  reeds  through  which  music  is 
blown. 

Gosse.  It  is  indeed  a  pleasure  to  me  to  hear  that  my 
prose  has  pleased  you.  But  you  do  not  think  that  I  write 
these  articles  merely  because  the  books  I  review  were 
written  by  lords? 

Moore.  Good  heavens,  Gosse,  such  a  thought  never 
crossed  my  mind.  Who  could  defend  the  lords  as  well 
as  their  own  librarian?  Who  should  defend  them  if  he 
refrained?  Who  has  a  right  to  defend  them  better 
than  he? 

Gosse.  I  never  put  it  to  myself  in  that  way  before,  but 
I  see  now  that  I  must  have  always  felt  that  their  old 
librarian  still  owed  them  his  service. 

Moore.  Service  does  not  comprehend  the  whole  of  your 
sympathy.  You  look  back  on  the  House  of  Lords  as  I 
do  on  the  Nouvelle  Athenes;  on  stepping  over  the  two 
thresholds  we  seemed  to  step  into  our  true  selves,  at 
least,  I  did;  and  you  can  judge  if  I  am  not  to-day  as 
distinctively  un  nouvel  AthSnien  as  I  was  when  I  brought 
you  Martin  Luther. 

Gosse.  It  is  nice  of  you  to  speak  like  this,  for  sometimes 
it  has  crossed  my  mind  that  my  attitude  to  the  lords 
might  be  misunderstood.  But  you  understand  me  so 
well  that  perhaps  others  too  understand  better  than  I 
thought  for. 

Moore.  Thank  you,  Gosse.  I  do  not  think  that  any- 
one seriously  misunderstands,  but  it  may  be  that  my 
almost  excessive  interest  in  human  conduct  has  enabled 


AVOWALS  55 

me  to  see  farther  into  the  lives  of  others  than  the  average 
man. 

Gosse.  As  we  are  on  the  subject,  I  may  say  to  you  that 
my  connection  with  the  House  of  Lords  has  been  useful 
in  many  ways  that  perhaps  you  do  not  know  of.  It  has 
opened  up  libraries  to  me  that  I  should  never  have  seen, 
certainly  never  have  known  in  detail  if  I  had  not  been 
privileged.  It  was  only  the  other  day  I  was  staying  at 
Lough  ton  Hall.  The  late  earl  wrote  some  charming 
poetry;  you  are  not  interested  in  the  byways  of  litera- 
ture, but  I  am;  and  besides  writing  a  good  deal  of  poetry, 
which,  in  my  humble  opinion,  is  not  without  value,  he 
was  a  great  book  collector.  His  libraries  were  among  the 
richest  in  the  United  Kingdom;  in  erotic  literature  they 
were  certainly  the  very  richest,  for  his  passion  for  col- 
lecting that  class  of  book  which  appears  in  the  catalogues 
as  curious  knew  no  abatement.  It  is  even  said,  with 
what  truth  I  cannot  determine  (it  may  be  no  more  than 
evil  gossip),  that  after  carrying  away  his  quarry  he  care- 
fully instigated  prosecutions  against  the  dealers  who  had 
supplied  them,  with  a  view  to  increasing  the  value  of  his 
own  purchases.  At  his  death  this  collection  caused  the 
family  great  embarrassment,  for  it  was  impossible  to  sell 
them  in  England,  and  books  are  not  easily  destroyed;  a 
large  fire,  stimulated  with  paraffin,  might  have  reduced 
them  to  ashes,  but  a  large  fire  in  the  stable  yard,  and  I 
know  nowhere  else  it  could  have  taken  place,  would  have 
caused  inquiries  to  be  set  on  foot.  So  it  was  decided 
that  no  better  thing  could  be  done  with  them  than  to 
send  the  books,  which  were  of  great  value,  to  Belgium, 
to  be  disposed  off  in  Brussels. 

Moore.  I  hope  that  the  money  they  fetched  was 
devoted  to  charitable  purposes.  A  foundling  hospital 
might  have  been  endowed. 

Gosse.  You  are  thinking  of  the  orphanage  in  Ibsen's 
play  of  Ghosts.     A  piece  of  symbolism  of  which  I  never 


56  AVOWALS 

wholly  approved,  William  Archer  even  less  than  I.  But 
about  these  books.  I  was  at  Lough  ton  Hall  last  week, 
and  on  looking  through  the  library,  to  which  I  went  at 
once,  I  came  upon  an  old  catalogue  that  should  have 
been  burnt,  for  it  contained  titles  of  many  of  the  books 
that  were  sold  in  Brussels,  and  among  them  was  this 
one,  Les  Arcanes  de  V Amour.  The  book  had  disappeared, 
but  I  copied  the  title  and  description  of  the  contents 
from  the  catalogue. 

Chroniqtjes  Estrangeres 

relatives  aux  armes  secretes 

de  l' Amour 

eperons  et  boucliers 

feintes  et  stratagemes 

charmes,  phyltres  et  onguents 

conduites  et  ordonnances 

pour  tous  rites  et  divertissements 


Se  vend  a  l'Enseigne  de  la  Licorne  proche  le  Palais 

La  Haye 
MDCCLXV 

Gosse.  The  words  are  simple  enough,  and  it  seems  to 
me  that  I  can  feel  my  way  safely  though  the  implicated 
currents  of  suggestion  in  the  first  lines,  but  when  I  come 
to  the  last:  conduites  et  ordonnances  pour  tous  rites  et 
divertissements,  I  seem  to  miss  the  connection  with  what 
has  gone  before;  lovers  seek  the  hidden  way  surely;  my 
lack  of  knowledge  of  French  life  is  no  doubt  to  blame, 
and  I  shall  be  curious  to  hear  you  expatiate  in  all  the  odd 
ambiguities  of  the  advertisement  till  it  reads — well,  like 
a  page  of  George  Ohnet. 

Moore.  You  have  heard  of  the  Duke  of  Brunswick,  the 
one  that  lived  in  Geneva  and  died  in  the  sixties.  You 
cannot  have  missed  hearing  of  him.  I'm  sure  it  was  in 
the  sixties  he  died,  for  it  was  in  the  seventies  that  Suzanne 


AVOWALS  57 

Lattes  used  to  tell  me  about  him  when  she  lived  on  the 
entresol,  7  Rue  de  Chateaubriand.  He  left  her  a  big 
slice  of  his  fortune,  but  the  town  of  Geneva  disputed  the 
will.  Poor  Suzanne!  Litigation,  endless  litigation.  I 
don't  know  if  she  got  her  money  in  the  end,  which  she 
earned,  as  you  shall  hear,  with  her  voice,  a  beautiful  alto 
going  down  to  A,  three  notes  below  the  middle  C. 

Gosse.  But  can  ambiguities  of  the  advertisement  be 
explained  through  the  register  of  Suzanne's  voice? 

Moore.  I  think  it  can,  else  I  should  not  have  spoken  of 
Suzanne;  a  delicate,  finely  moulded  woman,  which  is  rare 
in  a  contralto. 

Gosse.  Was  the  Duke  a  musician? 

Moore.  In  a  meaure,  but  only  a  single  composition  of 
his  has  come  down  to  us,  un  divertissement  sung  habitually 
on  Sunday  night  by  his  Grace's  choir,  the  Duke  walking 
round  his  drawing-room  attired  in  peacocks'  feathers, 
exciting  the  wonder  of  the  ladies-in-waiting,  numbering 
twenty-four,  all  seated  round  the  room  in  ballroom  attire, 
the  trebles  on  the  right,  the  altos  on  the  left.  A  mere 
byway  of  literature  and  music  inspired  by  Suzanne's  voice, 
it  is  true,  but  one  which  I  think  would  be  interesting  to 
make  known  to  the  public  if  Suzanne  were  here.  We 
were  going  to  Italy  together.  I  was  crazy  to  hear  her 
sing  in  Italy.  She  led  off  on  the  middle  C:  Oh  le  beau 
coq,  the  trebles  answering  her  on  the  G,  a  fifth  higher; 
the  altos  repeating  the  phrase  from  the  fifth  with  a  little 
more  emphasis,  which  naturally  brought  in  the  trebles, 
another  fifth  higher,  of  course;  and  on  the  words:  voyez 
comme  il  traine  son  aile.  At  this  the  altos  would  be 
encouraged  to  raise  their  voices  on  the  words:  en  etat 
d'enfiler;  the  trebles  answering:  une  de  nous,  starting 
higher,  and  that  is  as  much  as  I  remember  of  the  Duke's 
composition.  One  moment.  As  this  was  rather  a  strain 
on  the  ladies'  voices,  the  piccolos  came  to  the  rescue  and 
carried  the  musical  phrase  into  the  next  octave,  leaving 


58  AVOWALS 

the  ladies  repeating  the  word:  laquelle?  laquelle?  at  the 
top  of  their  voices. 

Gosse.  How  very  extraordinary!  Can  you  discover  no 
more  of  the  ode?  a  veritable  byway  of  literature  it  cer- 
tainly is. 

Moore.  I  daresay  I  might  recall  a  few  lines;  the 
ladies'  names  will  help  me:  Blanche,  Madeleine,  Carmen, 
Manon : 

Oh  le  beau  coq!  voyez  comme  il  trafne  son  aile 

En  6tat  d'enfiler  une  de  nous:  laquelle? 

Desire-t-il  un  sein!  r£ve-il  un  mollet? 

Blanche  montre  ton  cul,  il  est  blanc,  comme  lait. 

Madeleine  est  exquise,  Alice  ouvre  ta  bouche; 

Ta  langue  est  maraudeuse  autant  que  gu6pe  ou  mouche. 

Dans  les  palais  batis  au  dele  de  nos  cieux 

Le  nombril  de  Carmen  humanise  les  dieux. 

Mais  le  due  tres  friand  ne  veut  choisir  encore. 

II  quitte  filisabeth  et  sans  regarder  Laure 

Poursuit  son  reve 

and  in  verses  that  I  cannot  recall  at  this  moment,  the 
choir  despairs. 

Gosse.  But  why  does  the  choir  despair? 

Moore.  For  that  it  fails  to  instigate  a  whimsy  in  ducal 
blood.  But  as  he  prepares  to  depart  Suzanne's  voice  is 
heard,  disconsolate,  calling  to  Manon: 

Et  que  ta  voix,  Manon,  excite  notre  due 
A  passer  parmi  nous  plein  d'un  illustre  sue, 
Deplum6  tout  a  fait,  nu  comme  un  ver  der  terre 
Sauf  la  plume  de  paon  qui  lui  pend  au  derriere. 

I've  forgotten  if  the  shrilling  of  the  piccolos  at  last  suc- 
ceeded in  stimulating  the  Duke  to  make  a  choice,  but  if 
he  made  none,  a  tripping  measure  was  substituted  and 
the  ladies  danced  round  the  Duke,  plucking  him  slowly, 
and  when  the  last  feather  was  gathered,  the  doors  were 
flung  open:   Monsieur  le  due  est  servi. 

Gosse.  How  very  extraordinary. 

Moore.  I  think  that  I  remember  the  lines  that  eluded 
my  memory  a  while  ago: 


AVOWALS  59 

II  quitte  Elisabeth  et  sans  regarder  Laure 
Poursuit  son  r6ve  obstinement — reve  d'amour, 
Car  le  c6te  jardin  et  puis  le  cdte  cour 
D'une  jeune  Irlandaise  enfle  sa  chair  avide 
De  la  tres  jeune  chair.    La  nature  hait  le  vide 
Et 

Gosse.  One  moment.  We  shall  be  more  comfortable 
when  the  drawing-room  window  is  shut.  That  is  better. 
We  were  talking  of  a  little  yolume,  Les  Ar canes  de 
V Amour;  sold,  no  doubt,  with  the  rest  of  the  collection 
in  Brussels. 

Moore.  And  no  doubt  it  now  holds  an  honoured  place 
in  an  American  millionaire's  private  library. 

Gosse.  It  was  the  truly  Gallic  imagination  displayed 
in  the  advertisement  that  caught  my  fancy,  and  after 
the  pleasant  divertissement  it  has  afforded  us,  do  you  not 
think  we  had  better  return  to  Lytton  and  Disraeli. 

You  will  remember  that  in  my  History  of  English 
Literature — you  have  given  so  many  proofs  of  your  atten- 
tive reading  of  it  that  perhaps  you  do  remember  that  I 
place  Disraeli  higher  than  Lytton;  you,  it  would  seem, 
take  an  opposite  view;  but  we  will  not  waste  words 
on  our  differences  of  opinion  regarding  the  relative 
value  of  a  mercenary  literature,  novels  that  served  to 
pay  the  election  expenses  of  their  authors,  and  now 
exemplify  your  theory  that  the  English  novel  was  never 
anything  more  than  a  commercial  transaction  between 
author  and  publisher.  On  this  point  we  are  in  cordial 
agreement,  and  I  will  add  that  Disraeli,  knowing  his 
literary  talent  was  no  more  than  a  showy  facility  in  the 
handling  of  words,  an  essentially  Jewish  talent,  was  glad 
to  place  the  whole  of  it  at  the  service  of  politics,  whereas 
Lytton,  believing  himself  to  be  a  great  man  of  letters, 
gave  ear  to  the  tempter,  and  sold,  not  his  whole  soul, 
but  half  of  it,  which  is  always  a  bad  speculation,  for  half 
a  soul  is  of  no  use  to  God  or  man. 


60  AVOWALS 

Moore.  My  faith  is  plighted  to  your  psychology  that 
every  man  writes  as  well  as  he  can,  a  mournful  truth 
indeed,  for  the  rogue  is  more  interesting  than  the  dupe. 
This  much,  however,  may  be  said  in  favour  of  Lytton 
and  Disraeli,  that  they  succeed  in  amusing  many  more 
than  we  do,  or  ever  shall.  You  have  no  doubt  asked 
yourself  very  often  if  it  were  not  better  to  amuse  the 
multitude  than  to  deserve  the  passing  respect  of  the  few: 
for  all  passes  but  Shakespeare  and  the  Bible,  and  we  in 
our  midnight  communings  ask  ourselves  if  it  be  not  better 
to  range  with  humble  livers  in  content  than  to  seek  the 
grand  style,  for  whosoever  seeks  it  is  driven  into  suicide. 
Haydon  sought  it  and  was  propelled  towards  a  basin,  with 
a  razor  in  his  hand.  And  there  is  a  potential  Benjamin 
Haydon  in  every  one  of  us,  minus  the  noble  soul  that 
found  a  Calvary  on  Parnassus  from  the  evening  he  went 
to  Park  Lane  to  consult  the  Elgin  Marbles  for  information 
regarding  the  drawing  of  a  foot. 

Gosse.  I  know  nothing  more  heartbreaking  than  his 
description  of  his  mother's  death,  nothing  in  Balzac, 
nothing  in  Tourgueneff,  and  it  may  be  that  a  great  man 
of  letters  was  lost  in  a  bad  painter. 

Moore.  If  he  had  laid  aside  the  palette  for  the  pen  he 
would  have  sought  the  grand  style  in  literature.  A  noble 
soul  despite  his  failure  .  .  .  But  what  am  I  saying?  It 
was  through  his  failure  that  we  learnt  to  know  him. 
You  who  love  byways  should  read  his  autobiography. 
You  overlooked  him;  worse  still,  you  overlooked  Borrow. 

Gosse.  As  you  say,  I  overlooked  Borrow.  Mea  culpa, 
mea  maxima  culpa. 

Moore.  I'm  glad  to  hear  that  you  repent  an  omission 
which  is  a  grave  one,  but  I  must  not  take  credit  for  un- 
selfish reading;  my  discovery  was  made  while  reading  for 
information  rather  than  for  pleasure;  I  had  forgotten 
Borrow's  birth  and  death,  and  finding  you  had  overlooked 
him,  I  had  recourse  to  my  friends,  and  learnt  from  them 


AVOWALS  61 

that  Borrow  was  a  contemporary  of  Scott.  A  century  at 
least  should  divide  them,  I  said,  and  I  fell  to  thinking  of 
one  writing  The  Bible  in  Spain,  his  eye  always  on  the 
object,  thinking  only  how  he  might  discover  every  voice 
and  aspect  of  Spain  in  English  prose,  and  the  other 
improvising  novels  to  buy  farms.  Borrow  is  an  integral 
part  of  my  subject,  I  said,  for  now  I  come  to  consider  it, 
like  Sterne,  he  saved  his  talent  by  refraining  from  story- 
telling. 

Gosse.  But  he  did  write  stories:  Lavengro  and  The 
Romany  Rye. 

Moore.  These  admirable  books  have  always  been  looked 
upon  as  biographies  into  which  Borrow  introduced  many 
imaginary  anecdotes;  and  it  seems  worth  while  to  point 
out  that  the  strange  mixture  of  fact  and  fiction  which 
has  caused  so  much  wonderment  among  his  admirers 
was  imposed  upon  Borrow  by  the  very  nature  of  his  talent, 
too  great  to  permit  him  to  write  a  literature  of  oiled 
ringlets  and  perfumery,  and  not  great  enough  to  allow 
him  to  create  outside  of  his  own  observation  and  know- 
ledge, in  other  words,  to  evoke  human  souls  out  of  his 
instinctive  knowledge  of  how  human  life  is  made. 

Gosse.  We  had  an  interesting  talk  on  that  subject  not 
very  many  days  ago,  you  maintaining  that  Serge  Aksakoff 
was  not  the  principal  character,  but  Serge's  father, 
whereas  I  looked  upon  the  narrator  as  the  chief  character. 
But  I  can  see  now  that  I  was  wrong,  for  Serge  does  not 
attempt  to  narrate  himself  like  Rousseau;  he  is  less  in 
his  narrative  than  Borrow  is  in  Lavengro. 

Moore.  Much  less  than  Borrow  is  in  Lavengro,  a  mere 
mouthpiece.  But  Borrow  is  a  masked  man,  whose  identity 
we  would  pierce  and  who  excites  our  wonderment  as  he 
goes  by,  summoning  his  world  into  being  like  Goya.  A 
very  Goya  before  he  saw  Spain,  in  Ireland;  for  what  is 
more  like  Goya  than  the  old  woman  whom  he  found 
groaning  over  a  straw  fire  in  a  ruined  castle  somewhere 


62  AVOWALS 

near  Clonmel,  and  the  man  Borrow  met  hunting  hare 
with  hound  in  the  bog  as  he  returns  home?  I  know  no 
book  that  I  would  as  soon  read  again  as  The  Bible  in  Spain. 
Landscape  after  landscape,  and  Goya  and  his  people 
everywhere.  Is  there  not  somewhere  in  the  book  a 
dwarf  who  turns  somersaults  in  front  of  Borrow's  horse, 
or  did  I  invent  it?  I  was  grieved  when  he  parted  with 
his  horse,  and  did  not  forget  the  noble  animal  till  we 
reached  a  conversation  with  an  Archbishop.  You  want 
permission  to  sell  the  Gospels  without  notes  or  commen- 
taries? the  Archbishop  asks.  Borrow  admits  that  that  is 
the  permission  he  is  applying  for,  but  gathering  from  the 
Archbishop's  manner  that  the  permission  he  seeks  will  not 
be  granted,  he  observes  the  prelate's  ring. 

Gosse.  And  what  a  delightful  little  conversation 
springs  up  regarding  the  purity  of  the  gem.  ...  Of  what 
are  you  thinking? 

Moore.  I  beg  your  pardon,  Gosse,  for  my  absent- 
mindedness,  it  was  only  a  moment  ago  that  I  was  con- 
trasting Borrow  with  Goya,  and  now  I  am  thinking  that, 
unlike  Goya,  he  left  us  no  portraits  of  women  as  he  should 
have  done,  for  he  was  a  bachelor  till  he  was  nearly  forty; 
and  it  is  the  bachelor  who  tells  us  the  feminine  soul 
truthfully.  The  only  exception  to  the  rule  that  I  can 
think  of  is  Borrow,  whose  books  are  stamped  with  an 
indifference  to  women.  Yes,  Gosse,  it  is  so;  if  there  were 
no  bachelors  we  should  know  nothing  of  women. 

Gosse.  You  are  thinking  of  Balzac,  who  was  a  bachelor 
till  the  last  six  months  of  his  life,  and  the  choice  his  works 
afford  of  feminine  portraiture  is  a  wide  one,  from  Eugenie 
Grandet  to  Seraphita. 

Moore.  And  now  another  thought  has  come  to  me: 
that  it  was  Miss  Austen's  spinsterhood  that  allowed  her 
to  discover  the  Venusberg  in  the  modern  drawing-room. 

Gosse.     I'm  afraid  I  miss  your  point. 

Moore.     We  do  not  go  into  society  for  the  pleasure  of 


AVOWALS  63 

conversation,  but  for  the  pleasure  of  sex,  direct  or  indirect. 
Everything  is  arranged  for  this  end:  the  dresses,  the 
dances,  the  food,  the  wine,  the  music!  Of  this  truth  we 
are  all  conscious  now,  but  should  we  have  discovered  it 
without  Miss  Austen's  help?  It  was  certainly  she  who 
perceived  it,  and  her  books  are  permeated  with  it,  just  as 
Wordsworth's  poems  are  with  a  sense  of  deity  in  nature; 
and  is  it  not  this  deep  instinctive  knowledge  that  makes 
her  drawing-rooms  seem  more  real  than  anybody  else's? 
Marianne  loves  beyond  Juliet's  or  Isolde's  power;  and 
our  wonder  at  her  passion  is  heightened  by  the  fact  that 
it  wears  out  in  drawing-rooms  among  chaperons;  the  book 
falls  on  our  knee,  and  we  murmur,  as  we  look  through 
the  silence:  how  simple  the  means  and  how  amazing  the 
result.  A  good  deal  of  what  I  am  saying  here  is  repetition 
come  over  from  our  last  conversation,  provoked  by 
Borrow,  in  whose  books  the  drawing-room  never  appears. 
He  rode  past  the  Venusberg  without  seeing  it,  without 
hearing  it,  and  we  find  ourselves  in  a  work-a-day  world 
of  gipsies  and  prize  fighters,  horse  dealer  and  horse  thieves, 
odds  and  oddments  of  all  sorts  and  kinds.  Borrow  is 
never  at  a  loss  for  a  queer  turn  of  mind,  and  the  dealer 
in  Chinese  porcelain  who  is  inspired  by  the  writing  on 
the  cups  and  saucers  to  learn  Chinese  is  never  far  from 
my  thoughts.  Another  equally  interesting  anecdote 
eludes  my  thinking  for  the  moment.  It  will  come  back 
presently.  In  Wild  Wales  we  are  in  a  real  country  filled 
with  real  people,  and  Borrow  enchants  us  with  his  talks 
with  the  wayfarers  as  he  walks  through  the  hills,  having 
conveniently  left  his  wife  and  daughter  behind.  Numerous 
are  his  characters  as  are  the  people  that  come  and  go 
through  the  pages  of  the  Bible. 

Gosse.  How  he  enjoys  his  beer,  and  how  the  quality  of 
the  beer  fixes  a  certain  picturesque  site  in  his  memory. 
And  of  the  truth  of  this  to  nature  I  can  vouch,  having 
wandered  into  Wales  for  the  purpose  of  verifying  the 


64  AVOWALS 

accuracy  of  Borrow's  observation,  for  I  too  remember  a 
certain  town  by  the  excellence  of  the  glass  of  beer  I 
drank  in  its  inn. 

Moore.    What  was  the  name  of  that  Welsh  town? 

Gosse.  It  is  unkind  of  you  to  ask  me  these  questions. 
You  know  that  my  unfortunate  memory  retains  few  names 
and  dates.  But  here  is  something  you  may  not  have 
thought  of;  the  almost  Dutch  seriousness  which  we  notice 
in  Borrow  may  have  come  to  him  from  Holland.  He  was 
a  Norfolk  man,  and  Norfolk  more  than  anywhere  else 
is  impregnated  with  Dutch  influence,  especially  during 
Borrow's  century.  He  was  born  in  the  eighteenth;  I 
should  say  he  was  a  contemporary  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  as 
your  friends  told  you,  and  as  your  thesis,  or  a  great  part 
of  it,  is  that  literature  written  for  money  is  worthless  from 
an  aesthetic  point  of  view,  and  from  every  point  of  view  in 
a  few  years,  I  think  that  Borrow  is  the  illustration  you 
require.  All  his  books,  with  one  exception,  were  failures, 
commercial  failures,  with  the  exception  of  The  Bible  in 
Spain,  and  it  was  not  the  literary  merits  of  The  Bible  in 
Spain  that  caused  it  to  be  read.  It  was  read  for  the  sake 
of  the  propaganda;  if  it  had  been  less  well  written  it  would 
probably  have  been  still  more  widely  read.  And  if  you 
care  to  emphasise  your  paradox  that  a  man's  name  directs 
the  course  of  his  life,  you  can  say  that  George  Borrow  is  a 
name  that  would  be  approved  by  his  admirers  if  his  books 
had  come  to  us  anonymously.  You  will  be  safe  in  saying 
as  much,  for  the  name  is  plain,  straightforward,  without 
subterfuge  or  evasion,  in  perfect  agreement  with  the  man's 
literary  style  and  his  wont.  I  can  hear  you  call  it  an 
honest  English  name,  one  that  began  with  the  race,  to 
endure  for  all  time,  like  our  homesteads,  etc.  You  will  be 
able  to  fill  up  the  category  of  qualities  that  the  name 
evokes  better  than  I. 

Moore.  The  name  seems  to  me  (like  the  books  he 
wrote)  to  represent  one  side  of  the  man's  character  vividly 


AVOWALS  65 

enough,  but  there  must  have  been  another  side,  and  one 
that  played  a  large  part  in  the  comedy  of  his  life,  else  he 
would  not  have  troubled  to  keep  it  out  of  sight  so  com- 
pletely. I  am  conscious  of  a  desire  springing  in  me  to 
talk  for  an  hour  on  the  extraordinary  variety  of  characters 
and  conversations  in  that  great  book,  The  Bible  in  Spain; 
but  we  must  hasten  from  Spain  to  meet  three  sisters  from 
a  parsonage  over  against  a  Yorkshire  heath,  for  their 
literary  fortunes  draw  into  the  arena  of  this  discussion  an 
interesting  question:  how  far  the  circumstances  of  an 
artist's  life  contribute  to  get  recognition  for  his  work. 

Gosse.  Byron  was  largely  conscious  that  his  literary 
reputation  depended  on  his  acts  rather  than  on  his  words. 

Moore.    But,  Gosse,  isn't  that  always  so? 

Gosse.     Shakespeare  and  the  Brontes. 

Moore.  Had  Shakespeare  trailed  a  pike  in  the  Low 
Countries — a  phrase  beloved  of  Shakespearean  critics — 
his  contemporaries  would  have  appreciated  him.  The 
Brontes  had  silhouette  thrust  upon  them;  and  on  looking 
into  Jane  Eyre,  after  fifty  years  of  absence,  I  have  to 
confess  my  inability  to  discover  the  qualities  that  com- 
pelled you  and  Swinburne  to  write  of  it  as  if  it  were  a 
masterpiece.  In  speaking  of  Wuthering  Heights  you  were 
a  little  more  careful,  you  glided  swiftly,  but  in  writing  of 
Jane  Eyre  you  spoke  of — I  have  your  exact  words:  a 
sweep  of  tragic  passion  and  the  fusion  of  romantic  in- 
trigue with  grave  and  sinister  landscape — and  will  you 
deny  that  this  is  the  kind  of  phrase  that  the  pen  drops 
when  we  yield  to  public  opinion? 

Gosse.  I  am  glad,  flattered,  that  my  History  of  English 
Literature  was  of  use  to  you,  but  I  may  remark  that  it  was 
intended  primarily  for  the  general  reader. 

Moore.  I  have  no  difficulty  in  understanding  that  you 
tried  to  keep  purely  personal  opinions  out  of  your  book, 
judging,  and  judging  wisely,  that  these  would  merely 
puzzle  and  embarrass  the  reader  you  had  in  your  mind. 


66  AVOWALS 

Jane  Eyre  was  praised  by  the  best  informed  when  you 
wrote,  and  it  is  to  your  credit  that  you  were  not  deceived 
by  the  literary  babble  of  the  time,  nor  driven  to  flouting 
public  opinion,  as  you  might  well  have  been,  but,  with 
your  usual  tact,  judged  neither  the  place  nor  the  moment 
to  be  propitious,  and  refrained.  But  now  that  the  Bronte 
epidemic  is  over  may  I  not  seek  to  discover  what  your 
personal  opinion 

Gosse.     You  can  ask  me  any  question. 

Moore.  I  prefer  not  to  ask  any,  but  to  tell  you  the 
story  of  Jane  Eyre. 

Gosse.    But  what  is  a  book  divested  of  its  words? 

Moore.  As  much  as  a  man  is  when  divested  of  his 
flesh. 

A  widower  with  one  daughter  engages  Jane  Eyre  as 
governess,  and  it  is  not  very  long  before  Jane  begins  to 
notice  that  Mr  Rochester  pays  her  attentions.  Rochester's 
attentions  become  more  and  more  marked,  and  the 
marriage  into  which  Rochester  nearly  succeeded  in  in- 
veigling Jane  is  stopped  in  the  church  at  the  very  altar 
by  his  mad  wife's  relations.  It  can  hardly  be  doubted 
that  Charlotte  Bronte  would  have  preferred  Rochester  to 
have  said:  Jane,  my  wife  is  a  maniac  and  lives  in  the 
distant  wing.  But  if  you  like  to  live  with  me  I  will  try 
to  make  you  happy.  I  should  not  altogether  like  the 
bargain,  for  the  parties  are  not  bargaining  on  equal  terms, 
one  is  a  governess  and  the  other  a  man  of  wealth  and 
position.  But  there  can  be  no  question  that  from  a  moral 
as  well  as  from  a  literary  point  of  view  it  would  be  prefer- 
able to  bigamy.    What  happens  next?    I  have  forgotten. 

Gosse.  Jane  returns  from  the  church  to  the  Hall,  and 
I  think  I  can  aver  that  Mr  Rochester  is  at  once  accepted 
as  a  penitent,  a  penitent  inasmuch  as  he  regrets  his  design 
to  inveigle  his  governess  into  a  sham  marriage,  and  I 
think  he  confesses  that  it  would  have  been  wiser  to  propose 
that  Jane  should  live  with  him  outside  of  marriage.    And 


AVOWALS  67 

Jane  might  have  accepted  him  on  these  terms  if  she  had 
not  been  deceived  by  Rochester  in  the  first  instance,  but 
having  just  escaped  a  sham  marriage,  she  feels  she  cannot 
remain  at  the  Hall,  and  runs  away,  without  clothes  or 
money. 

Moore.  Doesn't  she  wander  in  the  country  any 
whither  no  whither,  to  take  refuge  at  last  with  Parson, 
with  whose  help  the  story  is  somewhat  tediously  drawn 
out  to  the  requisite  three- volume  length? 

Gosse.  The  maniac  sets  fire  to  the  house:  she  has  to, 
for  it  is  necessary  to  get  rid  of  her,  so  that  Rochester  may 
marry  Jane.  At  the  same  time  it  behoves  the  novelist 
to  show  a  noble  soul  in  her  hero,  and  the  best  plot  that 
Charlotte  can  devise  is  that  in  trying  to  save  his  wife's 
life  Rochester  is  blinded  by  a  falling  beam.  Even  so, 
Charlotte's  difficulties  are  not  cleared  up,  for  it  would  be 
a  cheerless  sort  of  story  if  Rochester  did  not  recover  his 
sight,  and,  as  soon  as  he  has  been  blind  a  couple  of  years, 
he  says  to  Jane:  Jane,  something  seems  to  glitter  on 
your  dress.  It  is  the  chain  you  gave  me.  Your  sight  is 
coming  back — or  words  to  that  effect.     Sensation! 

Moore.  It  is  strange  that  our  fathers  and  mothers 
were  not  shocked  by  these  evident  absurdities. 

Gosse.  Jane  Eyre  is  the  typical  English  story.  The 
story  that  every  generation  rewrites,  and  that  never  fails 
at  attract  readers.  New  details  are  invented,  each  gener- 
ation invents  its  own  vocalisation,  but  the  best  seller  is  in 
essentials  always  Jane  Eyre. 

Moore.  We  who  have  been  about  a  good  deal  have  no 
difficulty  in  imagining  the  number  of  literary  pens  that  a 
story  like  Jane  Eyre  will  set  scratching,  and  the  chatter 
it  will  set  flowing  at  a  dinner-table,  as:  it  was,  of  course, 
wrong  for  Rochester  to  pass  himself  off  as  a  bachelor. 
All  the  same  his  plight  was  a  sad  one,  tied  to  a  maniac 
wife  whom  he  could  not  get  rid  of,  and  then  the  sudden 
switch  off — the  divorce  laws  ought  to  be  amended.    But 


68  AVOWALS 

do  you  not  fear  that  if  the  marriage  laws  are  loosened 
much  further,  they  might  as  well  be  done  away  with? 
And  are  you  quite  sure  that,  if  he  had  confided  his  secret 
to  Jane  in  the  first  instance,  she  would  have  refused  to 
live  with  him?  If  the  speakers  are  acquainted  with 
French  poetry,  one  of  them  is  sure  to  quote  the  lines: 

Gloire  dans  l'univers,  dans  les  temps,  a  celui 
Qui  s'immole  a  jamais  pour  le  salut  d'autrui! 

And  the  inherent  desire  of  martyrdom  in  the  almost 
ugly,  scrappy  little  woman,  with  burning  grey  eyes,  will 
be  described,  and  the  tale  told  of  her  embarrassment 
when  she  stepped  across  the  threshold  of  Smith,  Elder's 
drawing-room,  and  found  herself  in  the  presence  of  six 
London  celebrities,  two  of  these  standing  on  the  hearth- 
rug, their  coat  tails  lifted  so  that  they  might  enjoy  the 
blaze  more  thoroughly.  The  editor  of  The  Cornhill  was 
there.  ...  At  this  moment  an  intrusive  footman  presses 
an  entree  on  the  speakers;  and,  having  helped  them- 
selves, the  literary  twain  fall  to  thinking  how  the  six 
portly  gentlemen  must  have  enjoyed  putting  questions 
to  Charlotte,  asking  how  she  has  gotten  that  sufficient 
knowledge  of  life  which  had  enabled  her  to  divine  a  man 
like  Rochester. 

Gosse.  Charlotte  and  her  sister  had  been  to  school  in 
Brussels,  and  they  returned  home  together  after  a  year's 
schooling,  but  Charlotte  was  drawn  back  to  Brussels,  in 
her  own  words,  by  an  impulse  that  seemed  to  her  irre- 
sistible. 

Moore.  And  it  was  this  irresistible  impulse  that  en- 
larged the  Bronte  silhouette  almost  indefinitely,  and  the 
discovery  of  letters  continued  the  enlargement  till  it 
filled  the  entire  literary  horizon,  and  Monsieur  Heger, 
the  schoolmaster,  came  to  supply  needy  bookmakers  with 
a  subject  suited  to  popular  taste.  If  I  could  only  rid  my- 
self of  my  conscience,  she  said,  on  her  way  to  Ste  Gudule. 
Penitents  were  passing  in  and  out  of  the  confessional. 


AVOWALS  69 

Charlotte  was  a  Protestant,  so  it  required  an  uncon- 
trollable impulse  to  propel  her  into  the  confessional.  At 
first  the  confessor  would  not  hear  her,  she  being  a  Pro- 
testant, but  she  would  not  take  no  for  an  answer — she 
confessed — what?  If  we  only  knew — if  the  reporters  had 
been  able  to  get  hold  of  that  confession  there  is  reason  to 
suppose  that  we  should  be  discussing  Charlotte's  morals 
till  we  ascended  to  the  judgment-seat.  Even  the  present 
war  was  not  sufficient  to  quench  the  desire  to  discuss 
whether  Charlotte  held  the  Professor's  hand,  or  the  Pro- 
fessor held  hers.  It  broke  out  again  in  The  Times,  and 
not  more  than  two  years  ago.  You  saw  the  correspond- 
ence, Gosse? 

Gosse.  No,  I  didn't,  but  I  like  listening  to  you:  go  on. 

Moore.  Some  wandering  gossip,  or  a  newly  discovered 
letter  blew  up  the  dying  embers  of  this  controversy; 
somebody  died,  somebody  confessed,  or  new  letters  were 
discovered.  I  have  forgotten,  if  I  ever  knew.  I  came 
upon  a  middle  letter,  and  was  struck  by  the  almost  pas- 
sionate tenacity  with  which  the  writer  clung  to  the  belief 
that  Charlotte's  life  had  always  been  grey  and  dull,  and 
that  nothing  had  ever  happened  in  it  to  redeem  the 
monotony  of  ill -health  and  teaching.  We  know  that  we 
are  not  virtuous,  we  know  that  we  cannot  be  virtuous,  but 
we  are  anxious  to  believe  that  somebody  else  is  virtuous. 
I  suppose  it  cannot  be  otherwise,  the  doctrine  of  atone- 
ment having  taken  such  a  hold  on  us.  But  this  explana- 
tion did  not  satisfy  me  altogether,  and  at  odd  times  the 
thought  returned  that  there  must  be  more  in  it  than  the 
instinct  of  the  individual,  and,  seeking  for  the  instinct  of 
the  hive,  I  said  to  myself  one  day:  of  course,  the  whole 
national  attitude  regarding  the  Brontes  would  alter  if  it 
could  be  proved  that  she  had  held  the  schoolmaster's  hand. 

Gosse.  You're  in  excellent  form  to-day,  and  I'm  sorry 
to  interrupt  you,  but  I  too  am  being  poked  up  by  a  con- 
tantly  recurring  thought.     I  think  I  remember    your 


70  AVOWALS 

saying  that  I  glided  swiftly  over  Wuthering  Heights,  like 
one  anxious  not  to  commit  himself  to  any  definite  opinion 
for  or  against  the  book,  and  I  do  not  think  I  am  going 
too  far  if  I  say  that  your  suggestion  was  that  my  private 
judgment  was  held  in  check  by  the  prevalent  literary 
opinion  of  the  time,  headed  by  Swinburne,  who 

Moore.  It  seems  to  me  quite  reasonable  to  suppose 
that  a  man  writing  a  history  of  English  literature  must 
refrain  from  challenging  received  opinions.  I  thought  I 
had  made  that  sufficiently  clear.  Moreover,  the  tendency 
of  your  mind,  as  I  apprehend  it,  is  to  accept  as  true,  what 
after  all  may  be  the  truth,  that  the  public  is  never  wholly 
wrong  but  unable  to  express  itself;  you  would  like  the 
public  to  come  in,  but  in  bibs  and  tuckers  that  you  have 
provided  and  tied  on. 

Gosse.  Your  view  of  my  tendency  seems  to  me  of  a 
remarkable  clairvoyance.  Just  so  does  it  appear  to  me 
that  my  intellectual  and  critical  bias  runs,  though  I  never 
thought  of  it  before.  This  is  seeing  oneself  through  the 
eyes  of  another,  whereas  your  intellectual  tendency,  if  I 
may  venture  to  express  it,  is  indifference;  I  might  even  go 
further  and  say  you  would  like  to  keep  the  public  outside. 
And  now,  having  stood  back  to  back  and  compared  our 
heights,  we  shall  do  well  to  return  to  our  yoe  lamb — you 
see  I  preserve  your  pronunciation — the  English  novel. 
How  does  Wuthering  Heights  strike  you  as  a  masterpiece? 

Moore.  Emily  was  born  in  1818,  and  died  in  1848,  and 
presumably  Wuthering  Heights  was  written  some  years 
earlier,  shall  we  say  at  six  or  seven  and  twenty?  Well, 
masterpieces  are  not  produced  at  that  age,  not  even  by 
Raphael,  for  the. simple  reason  that  nobody  is  a  master 
of  his  craft,  whatever  it  may  be,  till  he  has  practised  it 
for  ten  years,  not  even  if  it  be  the  humble  craft  of  prose 
narrative.  And  a  casual  glance  into  the  book  tells  those 
who  know  how  to  read  that  it  is  just  what  a  girl  of  genius, 
unpractised  in  her  craft,  and  without  experience  of  life, 


AVOWALS  71 

might  write  in  a  lonely  parsonage,  pitched  high  above  a 
Yorkshire  moor,  wild  and  violent  imaginings  shot  through 
with  glimpses  of  real  beauty.  But  a  glimpse  of  beauty 
her  vision  of  Heathcliff  is  surely,  a  man  haunted  by  the 
memory  of  Catherine,  his  enemy's  wife,  who  died  many  a 
year  ago;  more  than  twenty  have  passed  over,  but  for 
Heathcliff  there  is  nobody  in  the  world  but  Catherine. 
She  is  never  far  away,  often  by  his  elbow;  she  has  come 
to  speak,  but  she  utters  no  word,  but  signs  to  him,  and  he 
rises  immediately  from  the  meal,  and  follows  her  across 
the  desolate  heath.  In  vain,  needless  to  say.  The  hal- 
lucination continues;  he  sees  her  in  every  face  he  looks 
upon,  and  we  feel  with  him  that  only  death  can  release 
him  from  the  torture  of  the  deception,  for  ever  recurring 
in  a  hundred  different  aspects,  and  always  failing  him. 
Did  Emily  mean  the  wraith  to  stand  for  a  symbol  of  life 
itself?     She  hardly  knew.     She  wrote  as  we  dream. 

Gosse.  You  think  that  Emily  was  the  genius. 

Moore.  The  word  is  inapplicable  to  prose  writers  under 
forty,  and  more  than  a  single  work  is  necessary,  and  there 
is  nothing  in  Wuthering  Heights  to  show  that  Emily  Bronte's 
talent  would  have  developed. 

The  one  that  might  have  developed  into  a  fine  writer 
was  Anne — she  wrote  a  book  called  The  Tenant  of  Wildfell 
Hall,  a  baby  book,  it  is  true,  but  the  memory  of  it  lingers 
in  me  to  this  day:  a  story  of  illegitimate  love  that  came 
to  naught,  and  for  no  valid  reason  that  I  could  discover 
on  my  way  to  Castle  Carra,  whither  I  went  a  little  scared 
lest  perchance  I  had  been  born  into  a  world  in  which 
nobody  transgressed.  It  is  with  my  boyish  dread  of  a 
sinless  world  that  she  is  associated,  and  with  pity  for 
her  early  death,  coming  before  any  taste  of  life.  A 
virgin's  death  is  the  very  saddest.  Anne  revealed  her 
sadness  to  me,  and  I  take  this  opportunity  of  paying  my 
debt. 

Gosse.   You  have  thrown  every  sort  of  stone  against  the 


72  AVOWALS 

Brontes,  and  I  can  tell  by  your  face  that  you  think  you 
brought  down  Jane  Eyre  with  that  last  one — a  eulogy  of 
The  Tenant  of  Wildfell  Hall.  Jane  Eyre  is  a  silly  story, 
no  doubt,  but  many  silly  stories  abound  in  beautiful  pages, 
and  Jane  Eyre  is  not  an  exception.  It  is  many  years  since 
I  read  it,  but  I  am  still  haunted  by  a  memory  of  the  lovers 
in  a  dewy  orchard  or  garden,  and  a  dialogue  that  lasts  all 
night:  one  that  ends  with  the  dawn,  I  think.  You  may 
have  forgotten  these  pages,  or  only  half  remember  them, 
as  I  do;  if  so,  you  will  do  well  to  read  them  again. 

Moore.  Your  memory  is  better  than  mine  ...  in  this 
instance,  certainly.     I  have  forgotten  them. 

Gosse.  Thank  you  for  this  tribute,  which  it  is  an 
honour  to  receive  from  one  of  prodigious  memory,  though 
of  slight  reading.  And  now  there  is  a  point  of  criticism 
which  it  seems  to  me  you  have  overlooked.  It  is  that, 
of  all  the  novels  written  in  mid- Victorian  years,  the 
Brontes'  are  the  only  ones  that  retain  any  faint  vitality. 
Jane  Eyre  and  Wuthering  Heights  are  read  more  easily  than 
Lytton  or  Disraeli,  more  easily  than  the  late  Victorians; 
even  more  easily  than  Dickens,  Thackeray  and  George 
Eliot.  As  a  critic  of  English  fiction  it  behoves  you  to 
consider  how  this  has  come  to  pass;  and  as  you  do  not 
seem  to  be  ready  with  an  answer,  perhaps  you  will  allow 
me  to  tell  you.  Your  charge  against  the  English  novel 
is  that  it  has  been,  from  the  hour  of  its  birth  to  the  present 
year,  concerned  with  the  surface  of  life  rather  than  with 
the  depths.  If  this  be  true,  need  we  look  further  for  the 
reason  why  the  novels  we  enjoyed  in  our  boyhood  are 
rejected  by  the  younger  generation?  The  great  bulk  of 
men  and  women  know  life  only  by  the  waves,  and  the 
popular  novelist  concerns  himself  with  what  attracts  his 
public,  the  surface  of  life,  all  the  little  odds  and  oddments, 
the  picturesque  follies  of  the  hour,  the  tricks  of  speech 
and  manner,  the  ideas  of  the  moment.  And  his  audience 
is  delighted,  for  he  is  presenting  life  as  it  appears  to  them. 


AVOWALS  73 

But  all  these  waves  and  wavelets  sink  into  the  deep, 
disappear,  and  when  they  have  gone  the  books  go  with 
them. 

Moore.  But  the  Brontes  were  popular  during  their 
lifetime. 

Gosse.  To  some  extent,  but  it  was  not  until  the  nineties 
that  they  met  with  any  intelligent  appreciation. 

Moore.  I  am  beginning  to  understand — the  Brontes 
wrote  about  life  in  its  essentials,  which,  like  the  depths 
of  the  sea,  do  not  change. 

Gosse.  Mr.  Arthur  Mellows  is  never  wholly  wrong,  but 
he  cannot  explain  himself. 

Moore.  Do  you  explain  him? 

Gosse.  That  Parsonage  and  that  heath  which  he  photo- 
graphed so  often  are  not  interesting  in  themselves,  as  he 
thought,  but  because  they  saved  the  Brontes  from  the 
English  literary  tradition,  that  in  prose  narrative  only 
a  thin  upper  crust  of  life  is — shall  I  say — representable? 

Moore.  The  Brontes,  knowing  nothing  of  social  life, 
were  forced  to  look  into  the  depths. 

Gosse.  There  may  be  less  character  in  their  books  than 
there  is  in  Lytton  or  Disraeli,  but  there's  more  humanity. 

Moore.  I  see;  and  that  is  why  Swinburne  wrote  the 
monograph  which  he  summoned  you  to  hear,  but  he 
wearied  in  his  reading  and  laid  it  aside  so  that  he  might 
read  you  his  novel — a  novel  that  he  never  wearied  of, 
but  which  you  and  Mr  Wise  have  decided  shall  never  be 
published. 

Gosse.  Outside  his  gift  no  man  is  very  wise  and,  as  I 
have  mentioned  in  my  biography  of  the  great  poet,  whom 
I  was  fortunate  enough  to  know  intimately,  Swinburne 
lost  all  receptive  power  at  the  age  of  forty.  After  forty 
his  mind  was  closed  to  new  ideas;  it  was  less  flexible, 
less  elastic.  I  think  that  in  my  biography  the  word 
ossification  almost  occurs.  I  have  no  wish  to  withdraw 
it.     In  his  later  critical  writings  he  never  argued,  ex- 


74  AVOWALS 

plained,  or  analyzed.  He  merely  hammered.  The  noise 
he  made  was  sometimes  ridiculous,  as  is  shown  in  the 
sentence  in  which  he  called  George  Eliot  an  Amazon 
thrown  sprawling  over  the  crupper  of  her  spavined  and 
spur-galled  Pegasus.  And  a  hundred  sentences  as  silly 
and  as  ugly  could  be  culled  from  his  prose  writings.  I 
quote  this  phrase,  though  it  gives  me  pain  to  repeat  it, 
for  I  believe  that  the  origin  of  the  monograph  on  Char- 
lotte Bronte  may  be  traced  to  his  desire  to  write  some- 
thing that  would  distress  George  Eliot  and  her  admirers, 
rather  than  to  any  genuine  admiration  of  Jane  Eyre  or 
Shirley. 

Moore.  Like  everybody  else  in  these  islands,  he  looked 
upon  prose  narrative  as  an  entertainment  rather  than  as 
an  art,  an  easy  conclusion  to  arrive  at  after  his  many 
failures  to  write  it. 

Gosse.  In  his  secluded  life  fiction  was  his  only  enter- 
tainment. He  read  Dickens  from  end  to  end  every  three 
years,  and  three  times  he  read  Dickens  aloud  to  Watts- 
Dun  ton. 

Moore.  These  two  old  men  led  an  extraordinary  life 
in  the  Putney  villa  reading  to  each  other. 

Gosse.  Once  Watts-Dunton  tried  to  escape  from  it; 
he  married  and  brought  his  wife  to  live  at  The  Pines. 
But  she  didn't  stay  long,  she  said  she  could  not  listen  to 
two  old  men  shouting  at  each  other.  A  woman  being 
read  to  death!  But  as  she  was  a  good  wife,  she  took 
rooms  over  the  way  and  came  in  occasionally  to  see  that 
things  were  going  on  all  right.  We  have  no  exact  know- 
ledge how  Watts-Dunton  bore  the  separation,  apparently 
he  did  not  allow  it  to  disturb  him  in  his  life's  work;  but 
continued  to  look  after  Swinburne's  literary  interests, 
writing  all  the  business  letters,  and  keeping  unwelcome 
and  intrusive  visitors  from  him  with  no  thought  of  over 
the  way.  Life,  in  Watts-Dunton' s  administration  of  it, 
lay  on  the  poet  as  light  as  a  rose  leaf.     He  read  poetry 


AVOWALS  75 

and  wrote  poetry,  went  his  walks  to  Wimbledon  and  back, 
and  nothing  happened  till  the  day  came  when  Swinburne 
had  to  make  a  will,  for  Watts-Dunton  had  no  money,  and 
the  thought  of  his  friend  destitute  in  his  old  age  was  pain- 
ful to  Swinburne.  But  who  was  to  make  the  will?  Watts- 
Dunton,  who  began  life  as  an  attorney  in  the  Midlands 
(he  was,  I  believe,  the  last  of  the  attorneys,  that  branch 
of  the  legal  profession  having  been  suppressed  in  or  about 
the  eighties)  could  not  draw  up  a  will  in  which  he  inherited 
all  Swinburne's  property,  the  law  being  that  a  man  can- 
not be  a  beneficiary  under  a  will  that  he  himself  has  drawn 
up;  and  to  introduce  a  solicitor  into  The  Pines  and  let 
him  into  its  secret,  for  it  is  to  be  known  that  Watts-Dunton 
was  Swinburne's  heir,  would  be  publicity  intolerable. 
The  quandary  was  a  difficult  one  and  must  have  cost  the 
old  attorney  many  a  sleepless  night. 

Moore.  Balzac! 

Gosse.  But  at  last  he  determined  to  take  the  risk  and 
make  the  will.  Another  reason  for  this  step  was  that 
Watts-Dunton  was  not  unmindful  of  his  poor  relations. 
A  long  string  came  from  the  Midlands,  and  each  received 
a  small  sum,  ten  pounds  apiece;  a  strange  medley,  relics  of 
days  gone  by,  eager,  covetous,  surreptitious  as  Nibelungs, 
and  having  gotten  their  money  they  disappeared  quickly 
into  the  darkness  they  set  out  from. 

Moore.  The  will  was  not  contested? 

Gosse.  Watts-Dunton  appears  a  better  judge  of  human 
nature  than  one  would  have  gathered  from  his  novels,  for, 
of  course,  the  Swinburnes  never  thought  of  disputing  the 
will.  Why  should  they?  It  represented  the  intentions  of 
their  late  relative,  there  could  be  no  doubt  of  that,  and 
that  was  sufficient  for  them.  But  Nature,  always  wonder- 
ful, exacts  a  little  tribute  even  when  she  is  most  kind, 
and  when  Miss  Isabel  Swinburne  came  to  the  villa  to  see 
Watts-Dunton  on  business  matters  she  could  not  refrain 
from  dropping  in  the  word  heir — you  see,  Mr  Watts- 


76  AVOWALS 

Dunton,  you  who  are  the  heir.  The  word  was  like  an 
icicle  in  the  old  man's  collar,  freezing  his  very  marrow  and 
leaving  him  shivering  after  his  visitor  had  left  him,  asking 
himself  if  after  all  she  knew  the  will  was  not  valid. 

Moore.  A  delightful  story,  Gosse.  Reading  Dickens 
makes  a  marriage  and  almost  unmakes  it,  the  tribe  of 
shuffling,  snuffling  relatives  coming  for  their  money,  and 
then  the  great  lady  arriving  in  a  brougham,  blue  paint 
and  varnish,  to  play  with  the  poor  attorney  with  a  velvet 
paw.  You  don't  mind  my  changing  the  simile,  I  like  the 
velvet  paw  better  than  the  icicle.  I  hope  Mrs  Watts- 
Dunton  didn't  return  to  the  villa  after  the  poet's  death. 
I  like  to  think  of  him  sitting  under  a  lamp  writing  an  ode 
to  his  dead  friend.     No,  not  an  ode,  but  a  dirge. 

Begin,  ye  Wimbledon  Muses,  begin  the  dirge. 

Gosse.  Your  imagination  is  lively,  but  you  will  not 
mind  my  saying  that  Nature  is  a  better  story-teller 
than  you  are.  Watts-Dunton  began  neither  ode  nor 
dirge.  At  the  time  of  Swinburne's  death  he  was  much 
more  interested  in  his  own  memoirs.  But  he  was  an 
old  man,  and  hardly  able  to  undertake  the  task;  an 
amanuensis,  a  secretary,  suggested  itself,  and  the  choice 
fell  upon  a  colonel,  retired  from  the  army,  who  arrived 
every  morning  to  take  down  Watts-Dunton's  memories  at 
his  dictation.  But  a  little  refreshment  seemed  necessary 
to  both  of  them,  and  before  noon  Watts-Dunton's  mem- 
ories of  Rossetti  began  to  dim — you  know  he  attended  on 
Rossetti  much  as  he  attended  on  Swinburne — Rossetti 
was  a  chloral,  Swinburne  a  whisky  drinker,  and  I  have 
often  wondered  if  it  were  Swinburne's  supreme  lyrical  gift 
that  tempted  Watts-Dunton  away  from  the  poet-painter, 
or  the  belief  that  the  whisky  habit  could  be  more  easily 
cured  than  the  drug. 

Moore.  Nature  is  indeed  a  wonderful  story-teller,  and 
she  has  put  into  your  hands,  Gosse,  a  subject  excellently 


AV07.TALS  77 

suited  to  your  humour.  Take  heed  and  be  grateful  for 
what  the  Gods  have  given  you.  The  Putney  Parnassus: 
there  is  your  title.  If  you  want  a  secondary  title:  the 
Poet  and  the  Parasite.  How  I  envy  you,  Gosse.  You 
will  write  another  masterpiece.  You  will,  you  will!  But 
your  face  tells  me  that  you're  not  well  disposed  towards 
the  subject.  Let  us  go  over  it  again.  It  may  be  that  you 
do  not  foresee  the  possibilities.  • 

Gosse.  I'll  hear  you  no  longer.  Algernon  Charles 
Swinburne  was  my  oldest  friend,  and  I  absolutely  refuse 
to  turn  his  home  into  a  mockery. 

Moore.  Into  a  mockery,  Gosse!  Will  you  let  me  tell 
you 

Gosse.  You  may  tell  me  no  more,  I  won't  listen,  and 
under  my  own  roof 

Moore.  I  was  going  to  speak  to  you  about  a  poem  by 
Swinburne,  one  that  you  never  heard  of. 

Gosse.  A  poem  I  never  heard  of! 

Moore.  A  story  hangs  by  it,  an  article  that  was  never 
written.  It  was  proposed,  whether  by  Frank  Harris  or 
another  I  am  not  quite  sure,  but  during  his  editorship, 
that  Swinburne  should  write  an  appreciation  of  Dickens 
for  The  Fortnightly.  But  the  paper  was  never  written,  on 
account  of  the  rejection  of  a  poem,  a  ballad  with:  The 
wind  wears  o'er  the  heather,  for  refrain.  Have  you  met 
the  MS.  of  this  poem  in  your  researches? 

Gosse.  I  do  not  remember  it,  and  Wise  and  I  have  gone 
through  all  the  papers  carefully.  Are  you  sure  that  the 
poem  was  by  Swinburne? 

Moore.  I  was  told  it  was  by  Swinburne.  It  seemed  to 
me  rather  casual,  and  if  the  appreciation  had  been  written 
it  would  have  been  too  much  in  the  Pauline  manner, 
asseveration  upon  asseveration.  But  let  us  not  stray  from 
the  point  of  dutiful  criticism,  and,  as  I  am  a  little  weary 
of  fault-finding,  will  you  confide  to  me  your  best  thoughts 
on  Dickens?    I  thirst  for  some  whole-hearted  praise. 


78  AVOWALS 

Gosse.  I  look  upon  Dickens  as  the  first  man  of  English 
genius  who  gave  the  whole  of  his  genius  to  the  novel- 
reader;  he  was  able  to  do  this,  for  he  was  without  general 
culture;  and,  as  Matthew  Arnold  pointed  out,  two  things 
are  necessary  for  the  birth  of  art:  the  man  and  the 
moment.  You  have  talked  to  me  so  much  about  English 
prose  narrative  that  I  find  it  a  little  difficult  to  disentangle 
my  ideas  from  yours.  But  if  you  will  have  patience  I 
think  I  shall  be  able  to  do  so.  It  seems  to  me  certain 
that  in  Dickens  we  got  the  man  of  genius,  and  it  seems  to 
me,  if  not  as  certain,  at  least  arguable,  that  the  moment 
of  his  coming  was  not  propitious.  By  the  moment  we 
must  understand  not  only  the  literary  tradition  that  pre- 
vailed in  his  time,  but  the  circumstances  of  his  life. 
Dickens  was  a  man  of  the  people,  and  was  without  that 
school  and  university  education  which  liberated  Landor 
and  Swinburne  from  the  narrow  sympathies  and  later 
prejudices  of  the  Victorian  age;  added  to  which  he  had 
to  get  his  living,  and  he  could  only  do  this  by  supplying 
the  drawing-room  with  entertainment.  You  see,  I  accept 
your  definition  of  the  English  novel ;  if  he  had  not  been  a 
man  of  genius  he  would  have  continued  the  Lytton  and 
Disraeli  modes,  and  we  should  have  had  more  historical 
flourishes,  verbose  politics,  sentimental  rodomontades, 
foppery,  and  high  living.  Instead  of  these  we  got  the 
middle  and  lower  classes,  of  these  English  literature  was 
hardly  aware  before  Dickens  introduced  them!  You 
would  prefer  that  he  should  have  laid  less  stress  on  super- 
ficial markings — superficial  is  perhaps  unnecessary — on 
markings,  and  you  will  tell  me  that,  whereas  Balzac 
stands  a  head  and  shoulders  above  Daumier,  Gavarni  and 
Monnier,  such  characters  as  Micawber,  Stiggins,  Dombey 
and  Little  Nell  do  not  represent  any  deeper  humanity 
than  Cruikshank  and  Phiz.  I  answer  you,  and  I  think 
fairly,  that  though  a  great  man  is  always  greater  than  his 
environment,   he  is  born  of  it  and   shares  its  qualities, 


AVOWALS  79 

good  and  evil.  Balzac  lived  in  a  great  moment  of  literary 
revival,  one  as  favourable  to  French  literature  as  the 
Elizabethan  age  was  to  English.  But,  in  spite  of  these 
magnificent  advantages,  the  great  Tourainian  was  not, 
as  yourself  will  admit,  free  from  melodrama  and  senti- 
mentality. Hand  on  your  heart,  is  Vautrin  better  than 
Bill  Sikes,  and  are  the  worse  pages  in  Little  Dorrit  worse 
than  certain  pages  in  La  Femme  de  T rente  Aus? 

Moore.  Which  of  Dickens'  books  do  you  like  best? 

Gosse.  On  the  whole,  Pickioick,  for  we  recognise  the 
English  middle  classes  in  Mr  Pickwick,  and  it  is  an 
achievement  to  discover  their  symbol.  In  the  same  book 
we  have  Sam  Weller,  and  he  stands  for  the  mind  of  the 
lower  classes,  their  humour  and  good-nature.  A  man  that 
has  set  forth  two  figures  as  typical  as  these  cannot  be  dis- 
missed as  unworthy  of  our  literature  merely  because  his 
Travels  in  Italy  do  not  fulfil  the  aspirations  of  the  young 
idea.  For  the  sake  of  Mr  Pickwick  and  his  valet,  Dickens 
is  forgiven,  at  least  by  me,  for  the  somewhat — shall  I 
say? — lack-lustre  buffoonery  of  the  breach  of  promise 
case,  Mrs  Bardell,  Serjeant  Buzfuz,  all  and  sundry.  We 
forget  these  faults,  puerilities,  if  you  will.  Remember 
that  if  France's  portion  is  the  incomparable  novelist, 
England  received  the  incomparable  poet.  Of  what  are 
you  thinking? 

Moore.  Do  not  be  so  prickly.  Of  what  you  are  saying, 
what  else?  And  that  if  our  novelist  had  spent  his  evenings 
in  the  Nouvelle  Athenes  he  would  have  written  prose 
narratives  worthy  of  our  poetic  literature,  creating  char- 
acters that  in  their  seriousness  would  compare  with  Le 
Pere  Goriot  and  Philippe  in  Un  Manage  de  Gargon. 

Gosse.  But  if  he  had  gone  to  France  and  spent  his 
evenings  as  you  suggest,  we  should  not  have  had  Dickens, 
but  another  man. 

Moore.  His  talent  was  more  natural,  more  spontane- 
ous, than  any  he  would  have  met  in  France.    He  had  more 


80  AVOWALS 

talent  than  Flaubert,  Zola,  Goncourt,  Daudet;  but  he 
would  have  learnt  from  them  the  value  of  seriousness.  A 
quick,  receptive  mind  like  his  would  have  understood  that 
a  convict  waiting  in  a  march  for  a  boy  to  bring  him  a  file 
with  which  he  may  release  himself  from  his  irons  is  not  a 
subject  for  humour.  He  need  not  have  spent  the  whole 
of  his  youth  on  the  Boulevard  Exterieur.  A  few  years 
would  have  been  sufficient  to  dissipate  the  vile  English 
tradition  that  humour  is  a  literate  quality.  He  would 
have  learnt  that  it  is  more  commercial  than  literary,  and 
that,  if  it  be  introduced  in  large  quantities,  all  life  dies 
out  of  the  narrative.  A  living  and  moving  story  related 
by  a  humorist  very  soon  becomes  a  thing  of  jeers  and 
laughter,  signifying  nothing.  We  must  have  humour,  of 
course,  but  the  use  we  must  make  of  our  sense  of  humour 
is  to  avoid  introducing  anything  into  the  narrative  that 
shall  distract  the  reader  from  the  beauty,  the  mystery, 
and  the  pathos  of  the  life  we  live  in  this  world.  Whoso- 
ever keeps  humour  under  lock  and  key  is  read  in  the  next 
generation,  if  he  writes  well,  for  to  write  well  without  the 
help  of  humour  is  the  supreme  test.  I  should  like  to 
speak  in  my  essay  of  the  abuse  of  humour,  but  it  would 
be  difficult  to  make  this  abuse  plain  to  a  public  so  un- 
educated as  ours,  whose  literary  sensibilities  are  restricted 
to  a  belief  that  some  jokes  are  better  than  others,  but 
that  any  joke  is  better  than  no  joke.  I  do  not  wish  to 
libel  the  daily  or  weekly  Press,  but  it  would  seem  to  me 
that  we  have  not  a  critic  among  us  who  is  prepared  to 
say  that  humour  is  but  a  crutch  by  the  aid  of  which  almost 
any  writer  can  totter  a  little  way.  I  am  afraid  I  am 
repeating  myself,  but  the  matter  is  of  such  literary  im- 
portance that  a  repetition  may  be  forgiven  me.  In  the 
days  of  our  youth,  Gosse,  The  Athenaeum  was  our  first 
literary  journal,  and  I  do  not  think  I  exaggerate  when  I 
say  that  it  must  have  published  some  hundreds  of  articles 
enforcing  the  doctrine  that  humour  is  a  primary  condition 


AVOWALS  81 

of  prose  narrative  and,  without  it  occurring  to  anybody, 
though  all  the  best  pens  in  London  were  writing  for  The 
Athenceum  in  the  eighties,  that  Jean  Jacques  Rousseau 
attained  a  unique  reality  in  literature  by  abstention  from 
humour;  I  only  remember  one  smile  in  his  Confessions , 
and  it  does  not  outlast  a  sentence.  It  comes  at  the  end 
of  the  journey  that  Jean  Jacques  undertakes  for  the 
benefit  of  his  health,  on  his  way  back  to  Madame  de 
Warens. 

Gosse.  A  book  like  the  Confessions  provokes  different 
remembrances  in  all  of  us.  But  I  agree  with  you  that  a 
very  little  humour  would  have  turned  a  great  and  beauti- 
ful book  into  a  vulgarity,  and  that  only  a  very  great 
writer  would  have  abstained  from  humour.  One  shudders 
at  the  thought  of  what  the  scene  in  the  garden  would  have 
become  if  Jean  Jacques  had  not  preserved  his  gravity. 
You  remember  it — Madame  de  Warens  calling  Jean 
Jacques  into  the  bower  to  confide  to  him  her  project  for 
his  sexual  education,  and  how  sweetly  she  appreciates 
the  boy's  embarrassment,  telling  him  that  she  will  give 
him  eight  days  to  think  the  matter  over?  The  character 
that  emerges  when  she  folds  him  in  her  arms  is  a  new 
one  in  literature:  the  maternal  mistress. 

Moore.  I  remember.  One  does  not  forget  such  writing 
as  that.  But  how  strange  Jean  Jacques's  admirable 
lesson  was  never  laid  to  heart  in  England. 

Gosse.   I  would  make  good  some  omissions. 

Moore.  Pray  make  good  my  omissions. 

Gosse.  I  would  point  out  that  we  look  in  vain  for 
humour  in  the  Greek  and  Latin  poets;  Aristophanes 
was  an  ironist  rather  than  a  humorist,  and  the  same 
may  be  said  of  Shakespeare.  The  grave-diggers'  scene 
in  Hamlet  was  not  written  to  set  the  audience  giggling, 
any  more  than  the  scene  between  Cleopatra  and  the 
fruit-seller.  These  scenes  and  the  patter  of  the  porter 
in  Macbeth  were  written  to  delay  the  action,  so  that  the 


82  AVOWALS 

spectator  might  have  time  to  meditate  on  the  tragedies 
that  were  on  their  way  to  accomplishment.  But  the  same 
cannot  be  said  of  the  comic  scenes  relating  to  the  build- 
ing of  the  wall  in  the  Midsummer  Night's  Dream.  They 
may  have  been  humorous  originally,  but  I  think  it  will 
be  allowed  that  if  the  authority  of  Shakespeare  were 
withdrawn  from  them,  they  would  be  resented,  and  rightly. 
But  once  more  we  are  dropping  into  Shakespearean  con- 
troversy. And  to  bring  the  conversation  back,  I  will  say 
we  have  strayed  into  Tom  Tiddler's  ground.  No;  you 
must  not  interrupt  me.  You  asked  me  to  make  good 
your  omissions.  You  have  not  said  that  the  desire  to 
giggle  is  looked  upon  as  a  rare  quality,  although  every- 
body giggles,  and  on  the  smallest  provocation,  and  that 
it  is  particularly  obnoxious  in  the  theatre,  where  it  has 
almost  made  the  acting  of  a  tragedy  an  impossibility.  A 
sense  of  humour  well  under  restraint  is  a  precious  quality 
indeed,  both  in  life  and  in  literature:  it  saves  us  from 
urging  our  ideas  upon  our  friends  with  undue  insistence, 
and  it  is  to  the  man  of  letters  what  the  compass  is  to  the 
mariner.  I  should  like  to  continue  a  little  further;  but 
we  have  lighted  our  lanterns,  and  are  searching  for  a  man 
who  has  written  prose  narrative  in  English  seriously. 

Moore.  If  Dickens  had  not  come  into  our  literature  we 
should  lose  more  than  a  certain  number  of  books,  some- 
thing of  ourselves,  for  Dickens  has  become  part  of  our 
perceptions,  and  as  the  world  exists  in  our  perceptions  he 
has  enlarged  the  world  for  us.  But  can  as  much  be  said 
for  Thackeray?  If  he  had  not  come  into  our  literature 
we  should  lose  some  books  which  I  will  allow  to  be  admir- 
able, so  that  hitches  and  hindrances  in  our  conversation 
may  be  avoided.  But  I  do  not  think  that  we  should  lose 
any  more,  for  he  seems  to  me  implicit  in  the  literature  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  in  Fielding,  to  whom  he  has  often 
been  compared,  and  not  without  reason,  for  almost  any 
reader    acquainted    with    Tom   Jones    would    feel    that 


AVOWALS  83 

Thackeray  had  modelled  his  style  on  Fielding's,  adapting 
it  to  the  temper  of  Victorian  readers,  robbing  it  of  its  gusto, 
and  improving  the  spacing  and  ordination  of  the  different 
parts.  Both  are  equally  interested  in  the  surface  of  life, 
and  both  are  equally  unable  or  unwilling  to  look  into  the 
depths;  one  relates  Squire  Western's  drunken  bouts  and 
his  passion  for  hunting,  and  the  other  Pitt  Crawley's 
habit  of  talking  to  Horrocks,  the  butler,  during  dinner. 
Thackeray's  surfaces  are  often  admirable,  but  that  sense 
of  the  eternal  which  gives  mystery  and  awe  to  a  work 
of  art  was  unknown  to  him,  so  it  seems  to  me. 

Gosse.  You  said  that  Tom  Jones  was  a  book  without 
seasons,  without  trees,  without  flowers,  without  a  storm- 
cloud  above  the  landscape,  or  a  ray  in  it.  Might  not  the 
same  strictures  be  directed  with  equal  force  against  Vanity 
Fair? 

Moore.  Yes,  indeed.  Both  books  lack  intimacy  of 
thought  and  feeling.  No  one  sits  by  the  fire  and  thinks 
what  his  or  her  past  has  been  and  welcomes  the  approach 
of  a  familiar  bird  or  animal.  I  do  not  remember  any  dog, 
cat  or  parrot  in  Vanity  Fair,  and  I  am  almost  sure  that 
Tom  Jones  is  without  one.  A  caged  blackbird  or  thrush 
is  a  painful  sight,  but  the  parrot  has  chosen  domestication, 
like  the  cat  and  dog.  Some  of  our  home-birds  love  us, 
the  jackdaw  very  often;  the  raven  often  prefers  the  warm 
out-house  to  the  windy  scarp.  However  this  may  be, 
he  who  loves  animals  and  birds  is  more  human  than  he 
who  doesn't. 

Gosse.  Grip  loved  Barnaby  Rudge's  shoulder,  and  was 
with  him  always  in  the  Gordon  riots  and  afterwards,  I 
think,  in  prison.    Can  you  remember  what  he  said? 

Moore.  Unfortunately,  I  cannot;  it  is  a  long  while 
since  I  read  Dickens,  and  I  have  forgotten  the  names  of 
the  animals  and  birds  that  figure  in  his  pages. 

Gosse.    There  is  Gyp  in  David  Copperfield,  who   ekes 


84  AVOWALS 

out  the  character  of  Dora  very  happily;  and  we  might 
think  of  many  others. 

Moore.  Dickens'  description  of  Bill  Sikes'  dog  shows 
that  the  writer  had  observed  dogs  and  was  in  sympathy 
with  their  instincts.  Altogether,  Dickens'  mind  was 
richer,  more  abundant  than  Thackeray's;  Thackeray's 
always  seemed  to  me  a  meagre,  sandy  mind,  an  essentially 
ungenerous  soil,  that  produced  only  starvelings. 

Gosse.  But  this  description  of  Thackeray's  mind  is 
hardly  in  agreement  with  his  characters — his  characters 
only,  the  writing  is  often  sloven. 

Moore.  He  was  interested  only  in  the  drift  and  litter 
of  social  life,  always  pleased  and  proud  to  relate  that  a 
Major  or  a  Colonel  arrived  at  his  club  at  a  certain  hour, 
and  hardly  less  so  to  tell  us  how  a  lady  of  high  degree  is 
driven  to  satisfy  her  milliner  and  dressmaker  by  conclud- 
ing a  truce,  paying  something  on  account,  the  foe  to  wait 
for  full  settlement  until  the  daughter's  marriage  is  brought 
off.  In  Pendennis  and  The  Newcomes  a  booby  is  presented 
deftly,  but  he  is  poorly  conceived,  the  very  booby  of  a 
commonplace  mind,  whereas  boobies  in  Shakespeare, 
Balzac  and  Tourgueneff  are  men  of  genius  as  well  as 
boobies. 

Gosse.  Forgive  me  for  interrupting  you,  but  it  may  be 
well  that  I  should  remind  you  that  the  absence  of  interest 
in  nature  which  you  deplore  in  Thackeray  is  not  shared 
by  any  first-rate  writer  in  modern  or  antique  times.  It 
has  become  the  fashion  to  say  that  we  moderns  discovered 
nature,  but  is  this  true?  Virgil  told  the  story  of  the 
fields  as  well  as  Wordsworth,  and  if  the  early  Irish  poets 
are  remarkable  for  anything  it  is  for  their  love  of  nature. 
The  only  great  writer  that  I  can  call  to  mind  who  never 
mentioned  a  tree  or  flower,  a  field  or  hill,  is  Francois 
Villon. 

Moore.  It  is  true  that  flowers  and  trees  and  familiar 
animals  find  perhaps  as  small  a  place  in  Villon's  poems  as 


AVOWALS  85 

in  Thackeray's  novels.  But  Villon  was  not  lacking  in 
human  sympathies.  Now,  if  I  remember  The  Newcomes 
and  Pendennis  correctly,  Thackeray's  implicit  approval  of 
the  attitude  adopted  by  his  good  women  towards  Lady 
Clara  Highgate  and  the  porter's  daughter  whom  they  find 
nursing  Pendennis  shows  that  human  beings  were  as  re- 
mote from  his  sympathies  as  were  the  flowers  and  trees 
and  fields.  What  he  did  understand,  though,  were  pre- 
judices and  conventions,  and  that  is  why  his  novels  seem 
old-fashioned  to  the  younger  generation. 

Gosse.  But  his  characters  represent  something  more 
than  the  conventions  of  his  time.  Becky  Sharp  represents 
an  adventuress  prise  sur  le  vif. 

Moore.  An  adventuress  according  to  the  literary 
canons  of  the  fifties — that  is,  an  adventuress  without 
a  temperament,  which  is  very  much  the  same  as  a  soldier 
without  courage. 

Gosse.  But  I  can  imagine  a  man  lacking  in  physical 
courage,  yet  a  very  good  soldier. 

Moore.  Through  a  moral  courage  that  overcomes 
physical  weakness.  But  it  is  not  so  easy  to  imagine  an 
adventuress  overcoming  her  distaste  for  love  from  a  sense 
of  duty. 

Gosse.  Madame  Recamier  is  reputed  to  have  been  a 
cold  woman,  yet  she  attracted  men.  A  cold  woman 
leading  men  on,  making  them  miserable,  and  taking  her 
pleasure  in  their  misery  is  conceivable. 

Moore.  Quite  conceivable;  but  no  such  excellent  and 
subtle  conception  of  devilish  malignity  crossed  Thack- 
eray's mind;  nor  had  he  in  mind  the  great  adventuress, 
she  whose  weapon  and  defence  is  her  sex.  His  mind  did 
not  move  on  grand,  natural  lines;  he  imagined  a  little  in- 
triguing, middle-class  woman,  determined  to  get  on,  and 
he  was  interested  in  her  tricks:  how  she  won  over  the 
women  when  they  came  into  the  drawing-room  after 
dinner,  how  she  bamboozled  the  younger  Sir  Pitt,  etc. 


86  AVOWALS 

So  far  he  was  in  sympathy  with  his  subject;  but,  as  it 
appears  to  me,  his  interest  in  human  nature  did  not  com- 
pel him  to  ask  himself  any  essential  question  about  her. 
In  writing  once  about  a  celebrated  passage  in  St  Paul  I 
said:  no  man  is  known  to  us  till  he  has  revealed  his  sex 
to  us;  and  with  the  alteration  of  one  word  the  same 
phrase  will  serve  me  here.  Thackeray,  in  writing  of 
Becky  Sharp,  followed  the  English  tradition.  He  ob- 
served, and  abstained  from  meditation;  he  was  satisfied 
with  externals,  and  the  human  nature  that  belongs  to  all 
of  us — our  humanity — was  unknown  to  him.  It  did  not 
occur  to  him  to  humanise  Becky  Sharp  by  expatiating 
in  her  religious  feelings,  in  her  superstitions  perhaps,  be- 
cause mankind  is  instinctively  superstitious.  He  liked 
character  better  than  humanity — a  point  of  view  that  may 
be  defended;  but  in  omitting  superstition  from  Becky 
Sharp's  character  he  was  sinning  against  the  type;  for  no 
class  or  type  is  more  likely  to  seek  counsel  in  oracles,  to 
believe  in  the  line  of  luck  than  the  adventurer  and  the 
adventuress;  but  Thackeray  never  sends  Becky  Sharp 
running  to  a  Bond  Street  fortune-teller. 

Gosse.  You  have  clung  somewhat  tediously  to  your 
idea  that  the  English  novelist  never  looks  into  the  depths 
of  life,  and  I  have  been  waiting  all  the  while  for  a  quotation 
from  Thackeray  on  this  very  question.  He  says  some- 
where, and  in  Vanity  Fair — I  will  not  answer  for  the  exact 
words  of  the  sentence,  but  he  addresses  the  reader  and 
points  out  to  him  that  nothing  appears  above  the  waves, 
and  that  if  he  choose  to  look  under  them — well — he, 
Thackeray,  is  not  responsible  for  what  may  be  seen  there. 

Moore.  And  what  terrible  thing  was  Thackeray  hurl- 
ing at?  An  adultery  in  Mayf  air !  I  could  relate  a  hundred, 
but  without  the  magnificent  Rawdon  overthrowing  the 
Marquis  on  the  hearthrug,  and  flinging  the  jewels,  the 
tokens  of  his  wife's  sin,  in  the  nobleman's  face. 

Gosse.    A  very  theatrical  scene,  no  doubt;  altogether 


AVOWALS  87 

false,  no  doubt,  but  it  is  not  easy  to  say  what  Rawdon 
should  have  done  in  the  circumstances  unless,  indeed,  he 
had  adopted  the  grammatical  pose  related  in  the  chron- 
icles of  French  gallantries  touching  le  Marquis  de  la 
Perdrigonde,  who  on  returning  home  found  his  wife  in 
the  arms  of  a  lover,  an  Englishman.  I'm  wrong,  he  was 
a  German,  and  it  was  therefore  quite  natural  that  he 
should  strike  an  attitude  as  soon  as  he  was  dressed  and 
declare  his  intention  to  leave  the  room.  II  fallait  que  je 
m'en  aille,  he  said.  Que  je  m'en  allase,  the  Marquis  de 
la  Perdrigonde  corrected.  This  grammatical  unravelling 
of  an  awkward  situation  is  not  possible  in  English,  owing 
to  the  leanness  of  our  verbal  system.  But  though  our 
language  is  possessed  of  little  grammar,  the  possibility  of 
writing  so  as  to  defy  criticism  may  be  doubted.  Landor 
took  pleasure  in  reproving  the  ghost  of  Cicero  for  mistakes 
in  Latin;  in  the  person  of  Home  Tooke  he  reproved  Dr 
Johnson,  forcing  him  into  an  admission  that  he  had  con- 
structed a  sentence  negligently;  and  it  was  only  the 
other  day  that  you  came  here  with  a  bunch  of  mistakes 
gathered  from  Landor  and  Pater  and  myself;  if  I  were  to 
search  your  works  I  should  not  return  with  empty  hands. 
But  the  mistakes  of  the  illustrious  ones,  and  perhaps  my 
own  obscure  errors,  are,  if  I  may  say  so,  different  from  the 
vulgarisms  which  are  to  be  found  in  Thackeray,  who,  per- 
haps, is  guilty  of  more  than  any  writer  of  equal  impor- 
tance. 

Moore.    But  is  he  important? 

Gosse.  I  am  afraid  we  shall  have  to  leave  the  centuries 
to  decide  that  point.  Meanwhile,  a  word  upon  a  personal 
matter,  if  it  be  not  judged  unseemly  to  interrupt  a  purely 
literary  discussion  for  so  slight  a  cause.  You  reproved  me 
for  my  praise  of  Jane  Eyre*  saying  that  I  yielded  to 
popular  clamour,  but  whatever  truth  there  may  be  in  this 
contention  you  will  allow  that  my  acceptance  of  Thack- 


88  AVOWALS 

eray  as  a  writer  in  keeping  with  the  high  tradition  of  our 
literature  is  faint-hearted. 

Moore.    Very. 

Gosse.     We  can  now  pass  from  Thackeray  to  Trollope. 

Moore.  With  whom  I  can  shake  hands  more  cordially 
than  with  Scott,  for  it  was  not  he  who  turned  literature 
into  a  trade;  and,  in  view  of  your  pronouncement  that 
every  man  writes  as  well  as  he  can,  I  will  ask  you  if  it 
would  not  be  hard  to  discern  a  line  more  adapted  to  the 
abilities  Trollope  brought  into  the  world  than  the  line 
these  same  abilities  discovered  for  themselves.  He  rose 
at  six,  and  followed  the  road  that  leads  to  the  Parsonage 
until  it  was  time  to  go  to  the  Post  Office.  The  Bishop, 
the  Parson,  and  the  Squire  appear  in  suitable  parts,  the 
young  girl  and  the  lover  are  supplied  with  admirable  con- 
sciences and  chaperons,  and  between-whiles  there  are 
pages,  sometimes  chapters,  devoted  to  the  subjects  most 
likely  to  interest  his  readers:  sport,  farming,  the  housing 
of  the  poor  and  the  condition  of  the  junior  clergy  are 
written  about  in  a  way  that  all  may  read  without  any  dis- 
turbance of  their  preconceived  opinions.  In  Bar  Chester 
Towers  his  admiration  for  nice  conduct  exceeds  Thack- 
eray's, whose  style  he  is  supposed  to  have  continued.  The 
Widow  Bold  is  perchance  kissed  at  a  party  by  a  man 
she  dislikes,  an  unfortunate  accident,  no  doubt,  but  one 
that  hardly  warrants  the  sobs  and  tears  which  he  deems 
it  necessary  to  measure  out  to  her,  and  the  soul  searchings 
that  racked  her:  did  I  by  look  or  word  encourage  the 
horrid  creature  to  suspect  that  I  cared  for  him?  No,  I 
certainly  dfi  not.  In  the  fifties  tears  were  more  common 
than  they  are  to-day.  But  it  may  be  doubted  whether, 
even  in  the  fifties,  young  ladies  looked  upon  parties  in 
which  kisses  were  never  exchanged  as  altogether  success- 
ful. Tears  are  sometimes  in  fashion  and  sometimes  out  of 
fashion,  but  kisses,  so  the  proverb  tells  us,  are  always  in 
fashion,  like  the  gorse  flower. 


AVOWALS  89 

Gosse.  He  drones  like  an  old  lady  to  her  niece  after 
tea. 

Moore.  It  is  not  difficult,  it  is  impossible  to  write  for 
the  parsonage  in  good  prose.  A  good  writer  adventures 
himself  into  windy  Pontic  seas,  and  the  dangerous  straits 
of  Abydos,  where  the  oyster  is  reared. 

Gosse.     I  do  not  know  you  as  a  Virgilian. 

Moore.  Heloise  led  me  to  Virgil.  I  am  writing  HSloise 
and  AbSlard;  but  we  must  abide  with  Trollope  for  the 
present.  Out  of  date,  suranni.  .  .  .  The  wake  of  the 
vessel  has  not  yet  disappeared  into  the  grey  expanse  of 
water,  and  we  catch  still  sight  of  those  coasts  whence  we 
have  come,  crinolines,  azure  chamber  ware,  pink  decanters, 
rep  curtains,  blue  finger-bowls.  These  things  Trollope 
represents,  and  is  endeared  to  us  thereby. 

Gosse.     If  his  fame  rests  only  upon  these  things 

Moore.  His  fame  rests  on  a  much  more  solid  founda- 
tion. Trollope,  in  spite  of  his  name,  and  his  temperament, 
which  was  in  strict  accordance  with  his  name,  was  a  great 
revolutionary. 

Gosse.  Your  paradox  puts  me  in  mind  of  a  line  of 
Hugo's: 

Des  revolutions  dans  des  ecailles  d'huttres. 

Moore.  I  would  not  have  you  speak  disrespectfully  of 
Trollope,  who  carried  commonplace  further  than  anyone 
dreamed  it  could  be  carried,  and  brought  about  the 
reaction.  When  nature  seems  to  have  been  expelled 
definitely  from  art  nature  begins  to  return  to  art.  You, 
Gosse,  have  wandered  over  many  seashores  with  your 
father,  the  naturalist,  and  remember  the  drift  and  litter 
of  seaweed  with  here  and  there  a  dying  starfish  and  many 
other  derelicts  of  the  sea;  you  could  enumerate  them 
better  than  I  should,  and  you  can  therefore  appreciate 
the  comparison.  Only  the  faintest  line  remained  on  the 
horizon — I  think  the  year  was  '48.    In  that  year  three 


90  AVOWALS 

men  met  one  night  in  a  studio  in  a  street  off  Oxford 
Street,  Berners  Street  or  Newman  Street — John  Everett 
Millais,  Holman  Hunt  and  Rossetti — to  preach  and  to 
instigate  the  necessity  of  a  return  to  nature,  and  the 
following  year  the  tide  was  breaking  over  the  evil-smelling 
pools.    We  owe  the  Pre-Raphaelite  movement  to  Trollope. 

Gosse.  There's  generally  something  in  what  you  say, 
and  it  may  well  be  that  the  return  to  nature  which 
began  in  '48  was  brought  about  by  the  stifling  atmosphere 
of  Victorian  conventions.  But  Millais  illustrated  some  of 
Trollope's  books. 

Moore.  The  drawings  he  contributed  to  Orley  Farm 
are  in  his  best  Pre-Raphaelite  manner,  and  almost 
persuade  us  that  we  have  read  the  book. 

Gosse.  You  over-estimate  their  power.  They  cannot 
persuade  me  to  bear  with  the  listless  amble  of  Trollope 
prose. 

Moore.  An  amble  listless  as  Modestine's,  that  no 
sapling  cut  from  the  hedge  could  urge  her  out  of,  an 
exasperating  walk  that  tends  to  fall  into  a  crawl,  and  that 
you  fear  will  end  in  a  nap  by  the  roadside. 

Gosse.  It  would  be  interesting  to  know  if  the  book 
Orley  Farm  dropped  on  Millais'  knees,  and  if,  looking 
through  the  studio,  he  said  to  himself:  my  drawings  are 
the  condemnation  of  the  text. 

Moore.  He  was  too  eagerly  concerned  with  his  own 
work  to  give  a  thought  to  the  merits  or  demerits  of  Orley 
Farm,  and  acquiesced  in  the  belief  that  novels  were 
like  that,  and  probably  regretted  that  he  could  not 
illustrate  without  reading.  Painters  are  excellent  judges 
of  literature. 

Gosse.    He  must  have  thought  it  strange  that 

Moore.  Thought  what  strange?  Continue  to  put 
questions  to  me,  for  every  one  helps  to  clear  my  mind. 

Gosse.  But  Wordsworth  broke  the  conventions  before 
the  painters  did. 


AVOWALS  91 

Moore.  It  was  the  turn  of  the  painters  to  do  some- 
thing for  Art,  and,  by  Jove,  they  did  it.  The  naked 
woman  banished  from  the  one  art  was  welcome  in  the 
other,  and  you  must  not  forget  that  the  novelist  in  the 
fifties  wrote  almost  at  the  dictation  of  the  circulating 
library.  His  works  were  published  at  thirty-one-and-six- 
pence,  and  distributed  and  collected  by  a  service  of  carts. 
If  the  librarian  did  not  think  that  his  book  made  agreeable 
drawing-room  entertainment  it  was  not  heard  of  again. 
The  librarian  was  an  autocrat,  and  no  one  dared  to  be 
original,  even  if  he  could. 

Gosse.  Do  you  think  that  this  censorship  has  pre- 
vented the  addition  of  a  prose  epic  to  our  literature? 

Moore.  A  prose  epic  implies  the  existence  of  a  man  of 
genius,  and  genius,  I  suppose,  cannot  be  censored.  It  will 
find  a  way  out,  so  it  is  said,  though  all  the  doors  and 
windows  are  barred — up  the  chimney,  through  the  key- 
hole. And  if  that  be  true  a  first-rate  genius  did  not  exist 
in  the  fifties. 

Gosse.  You  will  perhaps  agree  with  me  that  the 
Russians  have,  on  the  whole,  produced  the  best  story- 
tellers. Tourgueneff,  Tolstoy,  Dostoieffsky,  Gorki  are 
all  story-tellers;  Tchekoff  too. 

Moore.  Yes,  indeed.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that 
the  instinct  of  story-telling  is  in  the  Russians  more  than 
in  any  other  race — more  than  in  the  French,  who  have 
only  had  Balzac  on  the  big  canvas,  and  Maupassant  on 
the  ivory  tablet.  We  perceive  it  in  every  Russian  that 
has  come  over  here,  and  miss  it  in  every  Englishman. 
And  now,  thank  you  once  more  for  having  allowed  me 
to  come  to  talk  to  you  about  a  matter  which  I  dare  to 
think  is  of  more  than  casual  interest.  I  shall  try  to 
assimilate  and  compose  our  conversations  into  the  form 
of  an  essay,  stopping  at  Trollope,  for  it  would  be  use- 
less and  perhaps  unkind  of  me  to  continue  my  search 
for  a  story-teller  among  my  contemporaries,  but  of  the 


92  AVOWALS 

dead  we  may  speak  as  plainly  as  we  please.  You  have 
no  idea  how  you  have  helped  me,  Gosse.  You  have  done 
me  a  service  that  I  shall  always  remember. 

Gosse.     One  moment.    You  have  forgotten  Pater. 

Moore.  Whose  Marius  the  Epicurean  is  the  only  Eng- 
lish narrative  that  men  of  letters  will  turn  to  in  the  years 
that  lie  ahead  of  us. 

Gosse.    He  applied  himself  to  the  art  of  writing. 

Moore.  He  wrote  the  only  prose  that  I  never  weary 
of;  but  it  was  not  of  the  beauty  of  his  prose  that  I  was 
about  to  speak,  but  of  something  which  is  perhaps  as 
important.  He  wrote  more  about  humanity  than  charac- 
ter. You  remember  the  chapter  entitled  White  Nights. 
In  it  he  allows  Marius  to  pass  before  us  almost  without 
distinguishing  trait  as  a  typical  young  man  of  all  time; 
and  as  a  foil  to  the  almost  abstract  Marius  he  sets  Flavius, 
whom  the  casual  reader  prefers,  for  character  rather  than 
humanity  was  Pater's  intention  in  his  portrait  of  Marius' 
friend.  You  have  set  me  thinking  again,  Gosse.  English 
literature  is  not  without  a  story-teller,  for  if  we  look  across 
the  Atlantic  we  find  one,  and  a  marvellous  one — Poe. 

Gosse.  It  is  indeed  a  surprise  to  me  to  hear  that  you 
admire  a  writer  so  essentially  unhealthy  as  Poe,  one  so 
concerned  with  the  very  hypertrophy  of  emotion.  The 
very  name  of  his  characters  seems  to  lead  one  out  of  the 
world  of  humanity  into  a  region  of  ghosts:  Ligeria, 
Morella,  Berenice,  Eleonore.  Antiquity  was  not  en- 
amoured of  death. 

Moore.  Not  enamoured,  but  antiquity  knew  the 
poetry  of  life  to  be  in  our  consciousness  that  it  is  passing 
from  us  always.  I  will  go  further  and  ask  you  if  it  is 
possible  for  even  a  peasant  to  love  a  woman  in  life's  daily 
usage  as  he  does  in  remembrance,  and  if  this  be  so  why 
should  Poe  be  blamed  for  setting  forth  as  representative 
of  human  life  many  beautiful  symbols  bearing  women's 


AVOWALS  93 

names?  Not  content  with  the  surface  of  life,  like  Trollope, 
Poe  sought  a  finer  distillation. 

Gosse.  Do  you  not  think  we  should  be  drawn  to  art 
to  praise  life? 

Moore.  The  mere  reversal  of  the  theologian's  formula 
seems  too  simple  an  expedient. 

Gosse.    What  would  you  put  in  place  of  it? 

Moore.  The  artist  is  without  dogma,  or,  if  you  like  to 
put  it  differently,  he  is  his  own  dogma;  and  to  tell  the 
story  that  life  brought  to  him 

Gosse.     Leaving  out  all  philosophy? 

Moore.  A  philosophy  is  implicit  in  every  well-told  story. 

Gosse.  What  philosophy  would  you  extract  from  the 
Iliad. 

Moore.     That  beauty  is  worth  our  pursuit. 

Gosse.     In  Stevenson? 

Moore.  Stevenson  is  a  butterfly  content  to  enjoy  the 
warmth  of  the  sun  and  follow  the  scent  of  the  flowers, 
and  his  enjoyment  in  these  is  so  delightful  that  we  join 
in  the  chase,  children  once  again,  led  by  a  child;  and 
after  a  long  day  in  the  open  air  we  return  to  re-live 
our  adventures  in  drowsy  dreams;  but  when  he  met  some 
Protestants  in  the  Cevennes  who  reminded  him  of  his 
own  Scotch  Protestants,  he  was  moved  to  drop  into 
philosophy,  saying,  and  I  think  very  superficially,  that 
Catholics  remained  always  Catholics,  and  Protestants 
always  Protestants. 

Gosse.    Are  you  sure  that  that  is  the  case? 

Moore.  Quite  sure,  else  we  should  not  have  had  the 
Reformation.  Protestants  and  Catholics  are  not  different 
sects,  but  two  eternal  attitudes  of  the  human  mind. 

Gosse.  In  the  pages  that  do  not  meet  with  your 
approval 

Moore.  In  the  pages  that  I  venture  to  consider,  to 
measure  and  to  weigh 

Gosse.    There  is  a  good  deal  that  you  must  have  re- 


94  AVOWALS 

cognised  as  true  in  Stevenson:  the  pleasure,  for  instance, 
that  he  felt  on  finding  himself  once  again  in  a  Protestant 
atmosphere  could  not  have  been  told  at  all  by  Poe,  who 
was  not  so  great  a  master  of  words  as  Stevenson. 

Moore.  A  very  inadmissible  statement,  Gosse,  for  how 
else  but  by  the  beauty  of  the  words  can  you  explain  Poe's 
poetry,  and  that  he  wrote  better  poetry  than  Stevenson 
will  be  conceded  by  all  men  of  letters,  and  if  you  fail 
to  nod  your  head  approvingly  I'll  write  to  Sir  Sidney 
Colvin,  who,  though  bewitched  by  his  edition  of  Steven- 
son's correspondence,  will  not  deny 

Gosse.  So  you  look  upon  Poe  as  a  master  of  words, 
and  his  English  as  equal  to  Baudelaire's  French. 

Moore.  You  must  have  forgotten  the  beautiful  open- 
ing of  Baudelaire's  introduction;  let  me  recall  it  to  your 
memory:  Is  there  a  devil  Providence  that  bends  over  the 
cradles  to  choose  its  victims,  and  with  malice  prepense 
throws  the  purest  spirits  into  hostile  regions  like  martyrs 
into  the  arenas — are  there  then  souls  dedicated  to  the 
altar  who  walk  to  death  and  glory  through  their  ruined 
lives?  Baudelaire  asks  this  question,  for  in  view  of  Poe's 
life  and  his  own  he  is  minded  to  believe  in  this  devil 
Providence.  And  to  know  the  lives  of  these  two  men  is  to 
share  their  mutual  conviction  that  they  were  victims  of 
such  a  Providence — Poe  even  more  than  Baudelaire,  for 
to  this  very  day  the  ill-luck  that  presided  at  his  birth  has 
not  ceased,  it  is  implicit  in  your  question:  Is  Poe's 
English  equal  to  Baudelaire's  French?  The  most  beautiful 
translation,  the  good  fairy  said,  as  she  descended  her 
cloud  staircase,  that  a  man  ever  had  shall  be  thine;  but 
she  was  overheard  by  the  bad  fairy,  who  returned  down 
the  chimney  saying:  I  cannot  take  away  the  gift  that  the 
good  fairy  has  given  thee,  but  it  shall  be  said  commonly 
that  thou  canst  only  be  read  in  translation.  Ma  fiancee  et 
ma  compagne  d'etude  et  enfin  l'epouse  de  mon  cceur  seems 
commonplace  and  trite  when  compared  with:  My  friend 


AVOWALS  95 

and  my  betrothed,  who  became  the  partner  of  my  studies 
and  finally  the  wife  of  my  bosom,  and  we  are  conscious 
of  a  drop  when  we  read:  Si  jamais  la  pale  Ashtophet 
de  l'idolatre  Egypte  aux  ailes  tenebreuses,  and  remember 
the  beautiful  English:  The  wan  and  misty-winged  Ashto- 
phet of  idolatrous  Egypt,  and  so  on  through  the  beautiful 
pages  of  Ligeria  we  can  detect  a  delicate  rise  and  fall,  the 
original  and  the  translation  having  the  upper  hand  in 
turns. 

Gosse.  As  usual,  a  good  deal  of  what  you  say  is  true, 
and  I  am  with  you  so  far  that  it  cannot  be  seriously  main- 
tained that  a  translation  that  follows  the  original,  comma 
by  comma,  full  stop  by  full  stop,  can  be  said  to  possess 
great  beauties  of  style  that  are  not  discoverable  in  the 
original.  All  the  same,  I  think  something  happened  in 
the  translation,  but  you  will  allow  that  a  less  favourable 
example  of  Poe's  style  might  have  been  selected.  In  the 
story  of  William  Wilson,  Poe  tells  how  the  struggle  be- 
tween good  and  evil  continues  in  the  same  individual  till 
the  evil  overpowers  the  good. 

Moore.  And  he  tells  his  story  without  the  help  of 
magic  potions. 

Gosse.     You  have  Dr  Jekyll  and  Mr  Hyde  in  your  mind. 

Moore.  Stevenson's  story  is  no  more  than  a  popular 
version  of  Poe's.  I  have  always  looked  on  this  story  as 
elusively  autobiographical,  for  Poe  was  a  poet,  and  a  man 
of  science,  and  although  the  poet  was  the  stronger  of  the 
two,  the  man  of  science  makes  himself  felt  sometimes  in 
the  prose. 

Gosse.  And  Baudelaire's  service  was  to  attenuate  the 
diagrams. 

Moore.  If  there  are  diagrams  in  Poe's  prose  some- 
times, there  are  festoons  and  astragals  in  Stevenson's 
always. 

Gosse.  As  a  writer,  you  place  Hawthorne  higher  than 
Poe. 


96  AVOWALS 

Moore.  A  young  man  cannot  overlook  Poe,  but  he 
can  Hawthorne,  Hawthorne's  genius  not  being  so  evident 
as  Poe's;  but  if  our  young  man  be  worthy  of  our  considera- 
tion, he  will  return  to  Hawthorne  in  later  life  and  with- 
out losing  any  of  his  admiration  for  Poe.  One  does  not 
exclude  the  others;  our  sestheticism  should  be  wide  enough 
to  include  Michelangelo  and  Phidias;  and  when  I  enter 
The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables  I  walk  about  admiring  the 
almost  Greek  absence  of  accent. 

Gosse.  Is  it  not  one  of  your  little  perversities  to  con- 
sider Hepzibah  Pyncheon  as  Greek? 

Moore.  A  truce  to  the  discussion  regarding  their  char- 
acteristics, for  have  I  not  seen  little  mediaeval  virgins  from 
Rhenish  towns  as  gainly  as  Greeks  maidens,  and  though 
there  be  nothing  in  Greek  art  as  ungainly  as  Hepzibah, 
there  is  nothing  that  I  can  remember  at  this  moment  as 
modest  in  Gothic.  But  it  matters  nothing  to  me  whether 
you  call  her  Greek  or  Gothic  if  you  admire  her;  and  as 
the  two  styles  mingle  in  her,  I  would  that  our  twain  ad- 
miration of  her  should  turn  to  one  this  summer  afternoon. 

Gosse.  Your  talk  of  her  the  last  time  you  were  here 
caused  Sylvia  to  take  the  book  from  the  shelves.  It  is  on 
the  table  by  you. 

Moore.  I  should  like  to  read  to  you  the  description  of 
the  old  maid  and  her  agony  of  mind 

Gosse.  The  morning  that  she  descends  the  old 
timbered  stairs  to  open  the  shop  for  the  first  time.  It 
is  many  years  since  I  read  it,  and  it  will  come  upon  me 
quite  fresh. 

The  old  maid  was  alone  in  the  old  house.  Alone,  except 
for  a  certain  respectable  and  orderly  young  man,  an  artist 
in  the  daguerreotype  line,  who,  for  about  three  months 
back,  had  been  a  lodger  in  a  remote  gable — quite  a  house 
by  itself,  indeed — with  locks,  bolts,  and  oaken  bars  on  all 
the  intervening   doors.     Inaudible,   consequently,   were 


AVOWALS  97 

poor  Miss  Hepzibah's  gusty  sighs.  Inaudible,  the  creak- 
ing joints  of  her  stiffened  knees,  as  she  knelt  down  by  the 
bedside.  And  inaudible,  too,  by  mortal  ears,  but  heard 
with  all-comprehending  love  and  pity  in  the  farthest 
Heaven,  that  almost  agony  of  prayer — now  whispered, 
now  a  groan,  now  a  struggling  silence — wherewith  she 
besought  the  Divine  assistance  through  the  day!  Evi- 
dently this  is  to  be  a  day  of  more  than  ordinary  trial 
to  Miss  Hepzibah,  who  for  above  a  quarter  of  a  century 
gone  by  has  dwelt  in  strict  seclusion,  taking  no  part  in 
the  business  of  life,  and  just  as  little  in  its  intercourse  and 
pleasures.  Not  with  such  fervour  prays  the  torpid  recluse, 
looking  forward  to  the  cold,  sunless,  stagnant  calm  of  a 
day  that  is  to  be  like  innumerable  yesterdays! 

The  maiden  lady's  devotions  are  concluded.  Will  she 
now  issue  forth  over  the  threshold  of  our  story?  Not  yet, 
by  many  moments.  First  every  drawer  in  the  tall,  old- 
fashioned  bureau  is  to  be  opened,  with  difficulty  and  with 
a  succession  of  spasmodic  jerks;  then,  all  must  close 
again,  with  the  same  fidgety  reluctance.  There  is  a 
rustling  of  stiff  silks;  a  tread  of  backward  and  forward 
footsteps,  to  and  fro  across  the  chamber.  We  suspect 
Miss  Hepzibah,  moreover,  of  taking  a  step  upward  into 
a  chair,  in  order  to  give  heedful  regard  to  her  appearance 
on  all  sides,  and  at  full  length,  in  the  oval,  dingy-framed 
toilet-glass  that  hangs  above  her  table.  Truly!  well, 
indeed!  who  would  have  thought  it!  Is  all  this  precious 
time  to  be  lavished  on  the  matutinal  repair  and  beautifying 
of  an  elderly  person  who  never  goes  abroad,  whom  nobody 
ever  visits,  and  from  whom,  when  she  shall  have  done  her 
utmost,  it  were  the  best  charity  to  turn  one's  eyes  another 
way? 

Now  she  is  almost  ready.  Let  us  pardon  her  one  other 
pause;  for  it  is  given  to  the  sole  sentiment,  or,  we  might 
better  say — heightened  and  rendered  intense,  as  it  has 
been,  by  sorrow  and  seclusion — to  the  strong  passion  of 


98  AVOWALS 

her  life.  We  heard  the  turning  of  a  key  in  a  small  lock; 
she  has  opened  a  secret  drawer  of  an  escritoire,  and  is 
probably  looking  at  a  certain  miniature,  done  in  Malbone's 
most  perfect  style,  and  representing  a  face  worthy  of  no 
less  delicate  a  pencil.  It  was  once  our  good  fortune  to 
see  this  picture.  It  is  a  likeness  of  a  young  man,  in  a 
silken  dressing-gown  of  an  old  fashion,  the  soft  richness 
of  which  is  well  adapted  to  the  countenance  of  reverie, 
with  its  full,  tender  lips,  and  beautiful  eyes,  that  seem  to 
indicate  not  so  much  capacity  of  thought,  as  gentle  and 
voluptuous  emotion.  Of  the  possessor  of  such  features  we 
shall  have  a  right  to  ask  nothing,  except  that  he  would 
take  the  rude  world  easily,  and  make  himself  happy  in  it. 
Can  it  have  been  an  early  lover  of  Miss  Hepzibah?  No; 
she  never  had  a  lover — poor  thing,  how  could  she? — nor 
ever  knew,  by  her  own  experience,  what  love  technically 
means.  And  yet,  her  undying  faith  and  trust,  her  fresh 
remembrance  and  continual  devotedness  towards  the 
original  of  that  miniature,  have  been  the  only  substance 
for  her  heart  to  feed  upon. 

She  seems  to  have  put  aside  the  miniature,  and  is 
standing  again  before  the  toilet-glass.  There  are  tears 
to  be  wiped  off.  A  few  more  footsteps  to  and  fro;  and 
here,  at  last — with  another  pitiful  sigh,  like  a  gust  of  chill, 
damp  wind  out  of  a  long-closed  vault,  the  door  of  which 
has  been  accidentally  set  ajar — dusky,  time-darkened 
passage;  a  tall  figure,  clad  in  black  silk,  with  a  long  and 
shrunken  waist,  feeling  her  way  towards  the  stairs  like  a 
near-sighted  person,  as  in  truth  she  is. 

Moore.  How  restrained  and  how  full  of  seriousness 
and  dignity,  a  portrait  that  Balzac  would  read  twice  over, 
recognising  in  it  a  vision  as  intense  as  his  own  and  better 
balanced,  and  Tourgueneff  would  have  recognised  in  Haw- 
thorne's portrait  genius  akin  to  his  own. 

Gosse.  It  is  a  pleasure  to  listen  to  prose  like  that. 


AVOWALS  99 

Moore.  And  it  is  a  pleasure  to  me  to  hear  you  express 
approval  as  I  read  to  you  on  a  balcony  on  a  summer  after- 
noon. Say  again  that  you  do  think  with  me  that  no  writer 
of  English  prose  narrative  has  written  as  beautifully. 

Gosse.  I  would  agree  with  you  with  more  alacrity  if  I 
were  sure  that  my  acquiescence  would  not  provoke  you 
to  some  unpleasant  gibes.  There  is  still  George  Eliot  to 
be  considered;  and  I  would  willingly  dispute  the  truth 
of  some  of  the  evil  things  that  have  been  said  about  her 
if  I  were  not  altogether  and  utterly  overcome  by  the 
graceful  proportions  and  the  temperate  dignity  of  Haw- 
thorne's portraiture.  In  the  pages  you  have  read  we  are 
conscious  of  his  beautiful,  calm  mind  as  we  are  of  the  sun 
behind  yon  cloud,  illuminating  it,  filling  it  with  the  poetry 
of  a  beautiful  summer  afternoon. 

Moore.  He  wrote  out  of  a  well-cultivated  intelligence, 
and  recalling  Pater  inasmuch  that  his  desire,  like  Pater's, 
was  to  make  each  separate  sentence  a  work  of  art  in  itself. 
Nor  are  his  gifts  of  vision  and  comprehension  of  human 
life  exhausted  in  his  portrait  of  Hepzibah;  it  breaks  my 
heart  that  I  cannot  read  the  whole  chapter.  It  is  too 
long;  but  do  you  read  Clifford's  portrait  when  I  am  gone, 
for,  as  it  seems  to  me,  it  stands  on  as  high  a  level,  in  some 
ways  on  a  higher  level,  than  anything  accomplished  by 
Balzac  or  Tourgueneff,  and  to  compare  it  with  the  work 
of  any  English  novelist  would  be  as  absurd  as  to  draw  a 
comparison  between  Rembrandt  and  Frank  Holl;  but  it 
would  take  half-an-hour  to  read  it  aloud,  and  I  will  accept 
your  promise  that  you  read  these  pages  when  I  leave  you 
in  lieu  of  your  attention.  I  turn  down  the  leaf  at  the 
place.  And  I  must  exact  a  promise  from  you  that  you 
read  Phoebe  too.  A  portrait  of  a  young  girl  in  her  teens 
can  never  be  carried  further  than  a  sketch,  she  being 
herself  no  more  than  a  sketch.  But  was  there  ever  a 
more  beautiful  sketch,  one  more  instinct  with  awakening 
life?    The  book  drops  on  our  knees,  and  we  ask  ourselves 


100  AVOWALS 

what  her  womanhood  will  bring  forth  in  fateful  happiness 
or  blunder.  It  seems  to  have  been  part  of  Hawthorne's 
problem  to  stir  the  reader  to  musings  of  this  sort,  and 
very  admirably  he  does,  with  Phoebe's  voice  rising  and 
falling  to  the  pathetic  tinkle  of  a  harpsichord,  pathetic 
always  to  our  ears  from  its  very  inadequacy  of  sound,  and 
doubly  pathetic  are  the  tones  of  Hepzibah's  harpsichord, 
in  this  old,  timbered  house. 

He,  Clifford,  would  sit  quietly,  with  a  gentle  pleasure 
gleaming  over  his  face,  brighter  now,  and  now  a  little 
dimmer,  as  the  song  happened  to  float  near  him,  or  was 
more  remotely  heard.  It  pleased  him  best,  however,  when 
she  sat  on  a  low  footstool  at  his  knee. 

Gosse.  Then  we  have  come  upon  the  narrative  we  are 
in  search  of. 

Moore.  The  harmony  is  not  less  expressive  than  the 
souls  that  fulfil  it,  and  not  less  when  we  meet  them  in 
the  torn,  uncouth  garden,  encroached  upon  by  the  back 
yards  of  some  near  streets,  and  the  speckled  fowls,  and 
the  patriarchal  cock  that  scuttles  away  from  approaching 
footsteps,  creeping  through  broken  box  hedges,  than  they 
were  in  the  falling  house;  and  in  keeping,  too,  are  the 
words  that  Phoebe  speaks  to  the  daguerreotypist  in  the 
garden  revealing  her  pretty  soul  and  to  its  very  depths. 
The  daguerreotypist,  Holgrave,  is  the  lodger;  he  was 
there  from  the  beginning  before  the  arrival  of  Phoebe 
and  Clifford,  and  he,  too,  might  have  been. 

Gosse.  So  we  have  come  to  the  might  have  beens. 

Moore.  You  seem  relieved  by  the  prospect  that  our 
search  may  end  in  failure,  thinking,  perhaps,  that  it 
would  not  be  in  keeping  to  come  upon  perfect  art  in  a 
world  that  has  outlived  beauty.  Holgrave  is  of  the  un- 
fortunate class  in  story  books — the  class  that  the  author 
cannot  keep  himself  from  intellectualising;  Holgrave  has 


AVOWALS  101 

been  heavily  intellectualised,  and  when  he  has  finished 
his  disputations  with  Phoebe  the  reader  is  informed  that 
he  had  visited  Europe  and  found  means  before  his  return 
to  visit  Italy  and  part  of  France  and  Germany  too.  At  a 
later  period  he  had  even  spent  some  months  in  a  com- 
munity of  Fourierists,  and  still  more  recently  he  had  been 
a  public  lecturer  or  mesmerist,  for  which  science  he  had 
very  remarkable  endowments,  and  a  few  pages  later  we 
learn,  this  time  without  surprise,  that  he  is  a  frequent 
contributor  to  the  magazines,  and  that  he  has  an  article 
in  his  pocket  into  which  he  has  put  an  incident  of  the 
Pyncheon  family.  He  would  like  to  read  it  to  her,  and 
henceforth  the  truth,  if  it  must  be  spoken,  is  that  the 
story  evaporates  in  the  literary  prejudices  and  conventions 
for  which  Scott  and  his  ilk  are  responsible. 

It  is  all  very  sad,  and  how  it  came  about  I  am  afraid 
will  never  be  thoroughly  explained.  To  whom  are  we  to 
assign  Judge  Pyncheon,  who  is  stricken  suddenly  in  death 
while  sitting  in  an  arm-chair  facing  the  portrait  of  the 
original  Pyncheon,  the  witch-burner?  Nor  is  this  all; 
behind  the  portrait  is  the  document  he  has  long  been  in 
search  of,  for  the  discovery  of  it  would  put  him  into  pos- 
session of  the  larger  part  of  the  State  of  Ohio.  To  whom 
are  we  to  assign  this  plot?  The  claimants  are  so  numerous 
that  I  think  we  had  better  assign  it  to  the  English  literary 
tradition  of  what  a  novel  should  be,  and  we  should  rather 
wonder  that  Hawthorne  succeeded  in  writing  beautiful 
openings  than  that  he  failed  to  write  perfect  works. 

Gosse.  I  am  glad  that  you  think  that  the  age  a  man 
lives  in  influences  his  art  as  much  as  his  individual  talent. 

Moore.  I  remember  that  you  say  somewhere  that,  had 
Tennyson  been  born  in  1550,  he  would  have  possessed  the 
same  personality;  but  his  poetry,  had  he  written  verse, 
would  have  had  scarcely  a  remote  resemblance  to  what  we 
have  now  received  from  his  hand,  and  you  go  on  to  say 
that  we  are  in  the  habit  of  describing  a  man's  originality 


102  AVOWALS 

as  merely  an  aggregation  of  elements  which  he  has  received 
by  inheritance.  If  this  be  so,  it  follows  that  the  congenital 
commonplace  of  the  English  novelist  is  also  an  aggregation 
of  elements  that  he  receives  by  inheritance.  We  need 
not  seek  further  for  the  extraordinary  lack  of  art  in  Eng- 
lish prose  narrative. 

Gosse.  There  is  no  escape  from  your  conclusion,  unless 
we  accept  the  alternative  that  the  perfect  moulding  of  a 
story  is  alien  to  the  genius  of  the  race. 

Moore.  A  somewhat  crude  conclusion,  one  that  I  shrink 
from  accepting,  but  it  would  be  vain  to  pretend  that  it  is 
not  supported  by  facts,  and  one  of  the  most  significant  is 
Hawthorne,  who  failed  to  carry  a  story  through.  The 
Blithedale  Romance  opens  on  a  prospect  of  story  that  I  read 
tremulous  with  fear  lest  Hawthorne's  strength  should  fail 
him  as  it  had  done  in  the  conclusion  of  his  House  of  the 
Seven  Gables.  The  story  rose  higher,  beautiful  it  seemed 
to  me  as  a  bird  on  wing;  and  I  said,  on  the  two  hundredth 
page:  we  are  in  Eldorado  safe,  for  he  will  not  commit  so 
patent  a  mistake  as  to  allow  him  who  joins  the  community 
to  return  to  New  York  or  Boston  till  the  end  of  the  story. 
And  asking  myself  if  his  art  were  sufficient  to  continue 
the  story  in  the  community  I  looked  to  see  how  many 
more  pages  there  were  to  read.  About  two  hundred,  I 
said.  It  was  in  the  middle  of  The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables 
that  he  broke  down.  The  strain  became  greater  at  every 
page,  and  after  the  splendid  scene  between  the  two  men, 
he  could  not  do  else  but  leave — there  was  no  other  issue. 
But  so  great  is  an  artist's  desire  of  the  masterpiece  that  I 
continued  to  hope  the  impossible  might  happen;  by  some 
miracle  of  genius,  I  said,  he  may  be  served,  and  so  vivid  is 
his  telling  of  the  disquiet  and  sense  of  spiritual  loneliness 
that  comes  over  us  on  our  return  to  the  multitudes  that  it 
began  to  seem  as  if  he  had  hit  upon  a  way  out  of  the  diffi- 
culty. My  hopes  were  at  pitch,  and  I  waited  almost 
*     athlesj  for  the  loosening  of  the  clutch.    Alas!    he 


AVOWALS  103 

walked  to  the  window,  and  on  looking  across  a  courtyard 
saw  against  the  lighted  panes  forms  that  he  could  not 
doubt  were  Zenobia's — I  have  forgotten  the  other  woman's 
name.  They,  too,  had  come  up  to  town.  After  that  the 
book  drifted  out  somehow  as  inconsequently  as  The  House 
of  the  Seven  Gables. 

Gosse.  Have  you  read  The  Scarlet  Letter? 

Moore.  No;  and  I  never  shall.  The  subject  is  too 
painful. 


CHAPTER  3. 

MOORE.  On  an  autumn  evening  by  the  fire,  thinking 
is  pleasanter,  more  soothing  than  writing;  but  talk- 
ing, sestheticising,  with  one's  feet  to  the  blaze,  is  delight- 
ful, and  of  all,  after  a  long  day's  work,  when  the  brain  is 
a  little  weary.  And  to  this  pleasure  I  can  look  forward, 
for  at  five  o'clock  Balderston,  a  young  American,  whom 
I  met  some  months  ago  in  a  house  in  the  King's  Road, 
among  some  American  Quakers,  is  coming  to  see  me,  and 
that  will  be  pleasant.  It  would  be  pleasanter  still  if  he 
were  a  painter  instead  of  a  writer;  for  any  young  Ameri- 
can between  the  ages  of  twenty  and  thirty  carries  my 
thought  back  to  the  years  long  ago  in  Julian's  studio  in 
the  Pasage  des  Panoramas,  Galerie  Montmartre,  I  think, 
for  the  first  gallery  on  the  left-hand  side  is  Galerie  des 
Varietes.  With  what  strange  vividness  we  remember  the 
places  we  frequented  in  our  youth!  I  remember  the 
shops  all  the  way  down  to  the  studio,  and  the  studio  itself 
in  its  every  detail — the  staircase  leading  to  it,  with 
Julian's  kitchen  on  the  first  landing,  and  the  old  woman 
popping  in  and  out,  she  who  used  to  turn  on  Julian 
fiercely  if  he  looked  to  see  whether  his  coat  had  been 
brushed.  Monsieur,  je  vous  ai  dit  que  j'ai  brosse  votre 
jaquette.    Vous  ne  me  croyez  done  pas?    Years  have 


104  AVOWALS 

gone  by  but  the  things  thereof  are  not  dead;  the  smell 
of  that  staircase  is  in  my  memory,  and  the  images  of 
many  Frenchmen:  Boutet  de  Monvel,  and  the  fellow 
with  the  red  beard,  Renouf  was  his  name;  he  used  to 
get  his  flesh  tints  too  red,  Monvel  was  prone  to  violet; 
Lefebvre's  great  pupil,  Ducet,  came  to  little  despite  his 
efforts  to  escape  from  what  he  had  been  taught.  Lizzie 
Gardiner,  she  who  married  Bouguereau,  must  be  an  old 
woman  if  she  is  alive.  Yet  I  loved  her.  What  has 
become  of  the  fair-haired  girl  who  married  the  old  naval 
officer?  And  her  friend,  the  Creole,  who  spoke  classical 
French  and  married  Ducet?  Ou  sont  ils  Vierge  souveraine? 
Their  faces  look  at  me  through  the  crowd,  and  go  again, 
but  I  can  see  Chadwick  more  distinctly  than  ever,  tall 
and  elegant,  a  finely  cut  profile,  a  pale  perplexed  eye, 
not  eyes,  for  I  see  him  in  profile,  which  is  not  strange,  so 
clear-cut  and  distinguished  is  the  profile;  and  so  possessed 
was  he  of  distinguished  and  refined  manners  that  he 
drove  out  my  preconceived  notions  of  Americans,  derived 
from  Dickens — from  the  types  described  by  the  Britisher 
when  he  walked  down  the  gangway  on  the  other  side. 
It  is  a  weakness  of  youth  to  believe  travellers'  tales,  and 
the  remembrance  of  my  surprise  at  finding  some  Ameri- 
cans to  be  gentlemen  and  ladies  amuses  me  still,  though 
forty  years  have  passed  over.  Mais  ou  sont  ils?  Gone  to 
dust  and  ashes,  no  doubt:  a  camp  that  has  passed  away, 
passed  out  of  my  life,  not  one  of  its  folk  returning  into 
my  life,  but  Chadwick,  and  he  only  for  a  few  hours.  He 
took  a  chair  opposite  me  some  five  or  six  years  ago  in 
a  Bouillon  Duval.  We  looked  at  each  other.  I  said: 
Chadwick;  he  said:  Moore;  and  after  breakfast  we 
walked  down  the  quays,  for  I  would  not  part  with  my 
old  friend  till  I  had  seen  his  pictures.  He  protested, 
saying  his  studio  was  on  the  fifth  floor,  but  he  led  me 
thither,  for  I  insisted,  and  we  had  not  been  looking  at 
the  canvases  turned  against  the  wall  for  long,  when  his 


AVOWALS  105 

wife  came  in,  a  Swede,  a  painter,  bringing  her  daughter 
with  her ;  Chad  wick's  daughter  more  than  hers.  The  same 
thin,  medallion-like  profile,  the  same  red  hair,  an  echo  of 
my  old  friend,  I  said;  and  my  thoughts  transferred  to 
Mrs  Chad  wick  put  these  words  into  her  mouth:  Elle  est 
bien  sa  fille 

Maid.  Mr  Balderston,  sir. 

Balderston.  I've  not  awakened  you  from  a  doze,  I 
hope. 

Moore.  No,  I  was  not  dozing,  only  thinking  that  I  was 
fated  to  have  American  friends;  and  what  is  stranger  still, 
to  have  kept  them  all.  I've  had  many  quarrels  with  my 
English,  Irish  and  French  friends,  but  never  with  an 
American,  not  even  with  an  American  publisher,  unless, 
indeed 

Balderston.  Don't  try  to  remember  a  half-forgotten 
misunderstanding,  for  I  judge  from  your  manner  that  it 
is  no  more.  Let  it  be  as  you  say,  you  have  never  quar- 
relled with  an  American  friend,  and  I  hope  I  shall  not  be 
the  first.     You  have  many  good  friends  in  America. 

Moore.  I  know  it. 

Balderston.  And  if  I'm  not  mistaken  the  Fortnightly 
conversations  with  Mr  Edmund  Gosse  will  be  appreciated 
in  America.  But  do  you  not  think  that  you  were  unjust 
when  you  said  that  prose  narrative  was  not  within  the 
reach  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  genius? 

Moore.  I'm  afraid  that  I  barely  apprehend  the  word 
unjust  in  this  connection:  Unjust!  Will  you  mention  a 
reasonable  narrative,  a  serious  prose  narrative. 

Balderston.  If  we  except  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  we 
shall  seek  the  world  over  for  a  human  narrative  in  verse. 

Moore.  I  had  not  thought  of  that,  but  I  suppose  you're 
right.  The  Divine  Comedy  and  Paradise  Lost  are  versified 
mythologies.  Be  this  as  it  may,  there  is  very  little  good 
narrative  in  the  world. 


106  AVOWALS 

Balderston.  No  race  has  produced  so  much  bad 
narrative  as  the  Anglo-Saxon. 

Moore.  I  thought  I  had  at  least  made  that  point  clear 
in  my  conversations  with  Mr  Gosse. 

Balderston.  You  did  indeed,  but  the  reason  you 
gave  was  that  the  English  novelist's  first  thought  was  how 
he  could  make  most  money.  But  all  Englishmen  cannot  be 
mercenary.  We  know  that  in  the  art  of  painting  they 
are  not. 

Moore.  Pray  let  me  have  the  benefit  of  your  thoughts. 

Balderston.  We  know  that  young  men  think  a  good 
deal  about  sex.  I  do  not  say  they  should  not,  and  I  do 
not  say  they  should.  I  hold  no  brief  for  either  side.  I 
am  merely  stating  a  fact.  We  know  that  in  life  they  do 
think  a  good  deal  about  sex.  But  in  the  English  novel,  a 
young  man  never  attempts  more  than  a  kiss,  and  repents 
profusely.  We  know  too  that  in  life  he  does  not  repent, 
and  goes  unpunished  very  often,  but  the  law  over  the 
novel  is  that  he  must  repent,  and  be  punished.  You  will 
see  my  point  in  a  moment,  which  is  not  that  a  measure 
of  sordid  intrigue  is  essential  in  a  novel,  but  that  an  obli- 
gation to  falsify  in  one  direction  brings  in  its  train  other 
falsifications.  In  your  conversation  with  Mr  Edmund 
Gosse  you  did  not  mention  the  pressure  that  the  libraries 
put  upon  authors,  and  it  is  the  censorship  that  libraries 
exercise  that 

Moore.  Accounts  for  a  singular  lack  of  masterpieces. 
No,  I'm  not  sneering.  Fiction  was  issued  in  the  eighties 
only  in  the  three- volume  form,  which  allowed  the  libraries 
to  dictate  what  might  and  might  not  be  written.  And  the 
strangest  part  of  my  story  is,  that  the  libraries  were  not 
to  be  moved  out  of  the  opinion  they  had  formed  by  the 
Press,  though  The  Spectator,  then  edited  by  Hutton,  one 
of  the  great  Victorian  editors,  and  one  of  the  great  moral- 
ists, reviewed  A  Modern  Lover,  my  first  book,  in  two 
columns  of  praise,  and  the  Fortnightly  singled  it  out  for 


AVOWALS  107 

review,  a  rare  piece  of  good .  fortune  to  happen  to  an 
author's  first  book.  The  Fortnightly  was  then  edited  by 
John  Morley,  now  Lord  Morley;  it  will  hardly  be  con- 
tended that  he  was  given  to  reviewing  pornographic  litera- 
ture; the  writer  of  the  article  was  Sir  Henry  Norman,  who 
also  hears  a  record  as  spotless  as  his  editor  in  the  eighties. 
But  the  libraries  did  not  like  to  admit  they  had  made  a 
mistake,  and  mine  would  have  been  a  Dreyfus  case  if 
circumstances  had  not  permitted  me  to  issue  A  Mummer's 
Wife  to  the  public  at  a  popular  price.  At  six  shillings  it 
reached  the  public,  helped  by  an  enthusiastic  Press,  which, 
however,  did  not  succeed  in  convincing  the  libraries  that 
their  views  regarding  literary  morality  were  exceptional, 
for  it  is  not  reason  but  prejudice  that  rules  the  world; 
and  ten  years  later  Esther  Waters  failed,  as  A  Mummer's 
Wife  failed,  to  move  Smith  out  of  the  absurd  position  his 
librarians  had  placed  him  in.  It  is  worth  while  to  record 
the  librarian's  name,  Mr  Faux,  for  while  telling  authors 
that  he  could  not  circulate  their  books,  he  entertained 
them  with  the  coarsest  stories  I've  ever  heard:  a  common 
man,  no  doubt,  who  distinguished  between  the  spoken 
and  the  written  word,  and  deemed  himself  virtuous  when 
he  told  the  reporter  that  because  of  certain  Pre-Raphaelite 
nastiness  in  the  narrative  he  could  not  circulate  a  book 
which,  I  would  have  you  remember,  has  done  more  to 
awaken  Christian  virtue  in  the  heart  than  any  other 
book;  which,  incidentally,  of  course,  has  been  of  much 
practical  utility;  for  there  is  an  Esther  Waters  Home  for 
Girl  Mothers.  The  very  name  has  become  so  synonymous 
with  goodness  that  it  cannot  be  pronounced  without  caus- 
ing an  uplifting  of  the  spirit.  You  think  that  I  cannot 
advance  proof .  Listen  to  this;  a  friend  sent  it  to  me  not 
many  days  ago;  a  page  torn  from  The  Shaftesbury  Maga- 
zine, containing  an  article  by  Miss  Kingsford  about  The 
Fallow  Corner  Home  for  Homeless  Children.  She  begins 
the  articles  with  this  sentence:  In  1898,  a  hospital  nurse 


108  AVOWALS 

who  dearly  loved  children  read  Esther  Waters,  by  George 
Moore,  and  thereupon  determined  to  forego  the  dream  of 
her  life — a  convalescent  home  of  her  own  for  little  chil- 
dren— and  made  up  her  mind  instead  to  start  a  home  for 
the  infants  of  unmarried  working  mothers,  for  whom 
practically  no  one  seemed  to  care. 

Balderston.  What  do  you  think  Mr  Faux  meant  by 
Pre-Raphaelite  nastiness? 

Moore.  I  don't  suppose  he  attached  any  real  meaning 
to  the  words,  a  ready-made  phrase  which  came  to  his  lips 
easily,  whereby  he  might  excuse  himself  for  refusing  to 
circulate  an  original  book. 

Balderston.  Esther  Waters  was  your  first  popular 
success.  But  do  you  not  think  that  if  it  had  been  pre- 
ceded by  other  popular  successes  the  libraries  would  have 
had  to  give  way? 

Moore.  It  is  probable  that  they  would,  but  it  is  not 
likely  that  any  writer  whose  aim  is  art  will  ever  write 
many  popular  successes. 

Balderston.  Pater  regrets  in  the  letter  which  you  pub- 
lish in  your  preface  to  Heinemann's  edition  of  The  Con- 
fessions of  a  Young  Man  that  you  cut  yourself  off  from 
many  readers  by  what  I  think  he  defines  as  your  Aristo- 
phanic  joy  of  life. 

Moore.  Pater  cut  himself  off  from  many  readers  by  his 
unfailing  sense  of  beauty;  and  I  can  imagine  the  embar- 
rassment that  would  have  been  aroused  in  his  face  if  I 
had  warned  him  that  he  was  cutting  himself  off  from 
many  readers  by  insisting  on  a  certain  unfailing  sense  of 
beauty,  not  readily  apprehended  by  the  casual  reader. 

Balderston.  You  would  have  it  that  even  Pater  some- 
times wrote  sentences  that  he  had  not  considered  suffi- 
ciently. 

Moore.  I  believe  that  to  be  the  case,  but  in  the  interest 
of  the  present  conversation  it  would  be  well  to  attach 
ourselves  closely  to  the  folly  of  the  Anglo-Saxon,  that  the 


AVOWALS  109 

moral  conduct  of  his  race  is  dependent  on  the  last  novel 
published.  You  know  the  story  of  the  old  woman  who 
was  afraid  to  relieve  herself  into  the  sea  lest  she  might 
bring  about  an  inundation:  and  on  the  subject  of  the 
moral  influence  of  prose  narrative  the  Anglo-Saxon  race 
seems  to  be  the  counterpart  of  the  old  woman,  for  just 
as  the  old  woman  failed  to  understand  the  depth  of  the 
ocean  tides,  and  that  her  little  drop  could  not  increase 
these,  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  cannot  understand  that 
man's  sexual  conduct  has  not  varied  during  the  centuries, 
and  cannot  vary.  Yet  on  all  other  subjects  Anglo-Saxon 
minds  are  reasonable  enough. 

Balderston.  Shakespeare  and  his  contemporaries  seem 
to  have  been  pretty  free  from  this  belief,  and  it  was  Jeremy 
Collier  who  pointed  out  in  the  eighteenth  century  that 
shocking  effects  would  follow  if  writers  did  not  cease  to 
produce  comedies  in  which  the  husband  was  laughed  at. 

Moore.  I'd  forgotten  his  name.  Jeremy  Collier!  He 
attacked  Congreve,  who  answered  somewhat  feebly  that 
if  vice  was  condoned  during  the  course  of  the  play  virtue 
was  always  exalted  in  the  concluding  lines.  Jeremy 
Collier's  pamphlet  was  soon  forgotten,  and  things  went  on 
very  much  as  before,  Sterne,  Smollett  and  Byron  writing 
as  they  pleased;  Byron's  Don  Juan,  it  is  true,  provoked 
some  protest  from  the  editor  of  My  Grandmother's  Review, 
the  British,  for  the  disease  was  gathering  strength,  and  in 
the  nineteenth  century  Zola's  novels  were  prosecuted 
under  the  Acts  forbidding  the  sale  of  pornographic  publi- 
cations, and  Henry  Vizetelly,  a  man  of  letters,  the  author 
of  several  historical  works,  was  put  in  prison.  I  have 
always  looked  upon  Henry  Vizetelly's  death  as  a  judicial 
murder.  A  false  and  hypocritical  agitation  that  was,  as 
you  will  see,  when  I  tell  you  that  Zola  was  received  as  a 
hero  two  years  later  in  London,  entertained  by  public 
bodies,    and   invited   everywhere   without   the   Vigilant 


110  AVOWALS 

Society  that  has  instigated  the  prosecution  against  Henry 
Vizetelly  uttering  a  word  of  protest. 

Balderston.  The  welcome  given  to  Zola  practically 
admitted  that  an  injustice  had  been  done  to  Vizetelly. 

Moore.  It  did,  indeed,  and  I've  often  wondered  if  the 
members  of  the  Vigilant  Society  ever  woke  in  their  beds 
asking  themselves  if  they  were  murderers.  But  while 
I'm  telling  you  of  the  Vizetelly  case  you  may  be  asking 
yourself:  what  significance  can  this  prosecution  of  long 
ago  have  for  me  to-day?  and  I  answer  you  that  some  things 
are  for  all  time  and  never  lose  their  significance,  being 
part  and  parcel  of  humanity.  I  believe  the  Vizetelly  case 
to  be  one  of  these,  so  packed  is  it  with  subterfuge,  evasion, 
lies,  hypocrisy,  cunning,  an  ill-smelling  midden,  humanity 
at  its  very  worst.  It  will  surprise  you  to  hear  that  this 
poor  old  gentleman,  in  the  seventy-third  year  of  his  age, 
could  not  find  a  lawyer  to  defend  him.  If  he  had  poisoned 
half-a-dozen  nieces  and  nephews,  brothers  or  sisters,  he 
could  have  had  the  best  advice  the  Bar  could  supply  to 
prove  him  an  innocent  man,  but  because  he  published 
Zola's  novels,  he  could  find  nobody.  The  Counsel  he  em- 
ployed took  the  fees,  but  Counsel  was  a  very  pious  man, 
who  said  that  he  could  not  go  on  with  the  case  because, 
to  do  so,  he  would  have  to  read  the  books.  So  he  per- 
suaded Mr  Vizetelly  to  plead  guilty;  Mr  Vizetelly  re- 
moved the  passages  that  were  said  to  be  objectionable, 
the  books  were  published  without  them;  new  passages 
were,  however,  discovered;  he  was  prosecuted  again,  and 
again  he  could  find  no  Counsel  to  defend  him,  and  again 
he  was  advised  by  those  who  took  the  fees  to  plead  guilty; 
and  the  old  man,  at  his  wit's  end,  in  the  seventy-third  year 
of  his  age,  enfeebled  by  illness,  consented,  and  was  sent 
to  prison.  Poor  old  man!  He  said  to  me,  in  Holloway 
Gaol:  there  was  a  good  jury,  and  I  should  have  been 
acquitted  if  Counsel  had  gone  on  with  the  case,  but  he 
advised  me  to  plead  guilty,  and  I  was  in  great  bodily 


AVOWALS  111 

pain,  and  mental  pain  as  well,  and  thought  all  the  world 
was  against  me.  Those  were  the  words  he  spoke  to  me 
in  Holloway  Gaol;   a  few  weeks  after,  he  was  dead. 

Balderston.  Without  doubt  a  painful  story,  and  I  can 
see  it  made  a  great  impression  on  you. 

Moore.  An  ineffaceable  impression. 

Balderston.  In  every  court  reformers  who  prosecute 
books  present  the  same  arguments,  and  they  are  familiar 
to  everyone.  Can  you  suggest  how  a  book  should  be 
defended  in  order  to  show  the  jury  the  fallacy  of  the 
belief  that  morality  depends  upon  literature,  and  at  the 
same  time  expose  the  inconsistency  of  the  crusaders  in 
not  attacking  classics  as  well  as  new  novels? 

Moore.  I  am  not  a  lawyer,  but  I  always  had  a  taste  for 
the  Law,  and  were  I  not  the  only  Irishman  living  or  dead 
who  cannot  make  a  speech  I  should  have  had  no  difficulty 
in  getting  a  verdict  of  acquittal  from  the  jury: 

Gentlemen  of  the  Jury, 

Certain  passages  have  been 
read  to  you  from  a  book  which  the  Prosecution  declares 
to  be  an  immoral  work,  and  if  the  charge  can  be  estab- 
lished to  your  satisfaction  the  judge  will  be  obliged  to 
order  the  destruction  of  the  book  and  to  punish  the 
publisher.  The  contention  of  the  Prosecution  is  that 
man's  moral  nature  and  conduct  are  not  only  swayed 
but  may  be  undone  if  certain  societies  do  not  keep  strict 
watch  over  the  latest  publications,  though  it  might  seem 
more  natural  to  believe  that  man's  moral  nature  and 
conduct  have  come  down  to  us  generation  after  genera- 
tion from  the  centuries  unaffected  by  passing  prejudices 
and  conventions,  as  are  the  commotions  in  the  air,  the 
tides  of  the  sea,  and  the  seismic  disturbances  under  the 
crust  of  the  earth. 

My  first  point  is  that  the  Acts  under  which  this  book 
is  published  were  not  intended  by  the  author  of  the  Acts 


112  AVOWALS 

to  apply  to  literature  but  to  pornographic  publications 
that  are  quite  distinct  from  literature.  It  is  not  true,  as 
the  Prosecution  implied,  that  pornography  and  literature 
overlap,  and  that  the  frontiers  are  indistinct.  On  the 
contrary,  the  frontiers  are  extremely  well  defined,  so  much 
so  that  even  if  all  literature  was  searched  through  and 
through  it  would  be  difficult  to  find  a  book  that  a  man 
of  letters  could  not  instantly  place  in  one  category  or  in 
the  other.  The  reason  of  this  is  that  real  literature  is 
concerned  with  description  of  life  and  thoughts  about  life 
rather  than  with  acts.  The  very  opposite  is  true  in  the 
case  of  pornographic  books.  It  is  true,  however,  that  in 
real  literature  a  good  deal  of  license  is  asked  for  by  the 
author.  He  must  write  about  the  whole  of  life  and  not 
about  part  of  life,  and  he  must  write  truth  and  not  lies. 
I  think  everybody  will  agree  to  concede  this  point  to  me, 
but  with  it  goes  the  corollary  that  a  book  is  not  to  be 
condemned  because  it  contains  a  coarse  passage.  If  this 
be  denied  all  literature  would  have  to  be  prosecuted.  I 
also  contend  that  a  book  cannot  be  judged  by  a  carefully 
selected  passage.  It  would  be  impossible  to  judge  of  the 
literary  value  of  a  book  by  a  few  passages ;  how  then  can 
you  judge  of  the  morality  of  the  book  by  a  few  passages? 
I  shall  have  to  maintain,  in  the  interests  of  the  case  I 
am  defending,  that  a  book  cannot  be  judged  by  certain 
passages,  and  availing  myself  of  the  ruling  of  a  great 
number  of  learned  expositors,  who  have  always  held  that 
if  portions  be  read  from  a  letter  the  opposing  Counsel  is 
entitled  to  have  the  whole  letter  read  to  the  Court,  I  shall 
read  you  this  book  in  its  entirety,  and  afterwards  I  shall 
meet  the  charge  that  these  isolated  passages  upon  which 
this  prosecution  is  based  are  unpermissibly  broad  by 
reading  you  extracts  from  books  which  are,  by  common 
consent,  among  the  classics  of  our  language. 

I'm  very  sorry  to  be  obliged  to  keep  you  from  your 
homes  while  my  assistants  and  myself  read  to  you  repre- 


AVOWALS  113 

sentative  selections  from  all  periods  of  English  literature, 
but  this  case  is  of  the  utmost  importance,  of  far  more 
importance  than  any  trial  for  murder,  involving,  as  it  does, 
the  moral  and  intellectual  vigour  of  our  race.  The  case 
which  you  are  asked  to  try  has  never  been  tried  before. 
In  the  case  of  Vizetelly  every  effort  was  made  on  both 
occasions,  and  was  made  successfully,  to  induce  him  to 
plead  guilty.  He  was  told  that  the  jury  selected  were 
small  tradesmen  who  could  not  understand  literary  ques- 
tions and  would  surely  convict  him.  But  I'm  not  of  the 
opinion  that  small  tradesmen  cannot  try  a  case  of  this 
kind,  if  one  condition  be  complied  with:  that  the  case 
be  laid  before  the  jury  in  its  entirety.  We  cannot  get  any 
kind  of  fair  verdicts  if  shreds  of  cases  are  laid  before 
juries,  and  that  is  what  the  Prosecution  proposes  to  do — 
to  judge  the  book  by  extracts.  My  intention  is  to  get  the 
whole  of  the  case  before  the  Court,  and  I  can  only  do  this 
by  reading  the  book  to  you  from  cover  to  cover,  and 
reading  to  you  passages  from  authors  of  established  re- 
putations, authors  with  whom  everybody  is  supposed  to 
be  acquainted.  If  your  finding  be  that  my  client  has 
exceeded  the  licence  that  has  been  tacitly  granted  by 
common  consent  to  English  literature  you  will  be  bound 
to  condemn  his  book  to  be  destroyed  and  himself  to  be 
punished  for  having  issued  it.  If,  on  the  contrary,  you  find 
that  he  has  not  written  with  more  licence  than  the  authors 
of  the  Bible  or  Shakespeare  and  the  other  Elizabethan 
poets  and  dramatists,  the  Restoration  dramatists,  Sterne, 
Fielding,  Smollett,  Richardson,  Byron,  Shelley,  Swin- 
burne— the  list  of  names  I  have  pronounced  is  by  no 
means  exhausted,  I  merely  state  those  that  rise  up  in  my 
mind  at  the  moment  of  speaking  and  do  not  pretend  that 
I  might  not  have  made  a  much  better  selection — you  will 
be  obliged  to  acquit  him.  It  cannot  be  maintained  that 
there  is  anything  in  the  book  I  am  defending  that  exceeds 
the  freedom  of  speech  of  certain  passages  which  I  shall 


114  AVOWALS 

read  from  Shakespeare  and  from  other  great  writers.  After 
reading  each  passage  I  shall  challenge  my  learned  friend 
to  deny  that  it  is  coarser  than  those  of  which  he  complains, 
and  if  he  cannot  do  so  it  seems  to  me  you  must  acquit  my 
client  of  the  charge  of  publishing  a  book  that  will  damage 
the  moral  currency,  one  that  is  harmful  to  the  health  of 
the  race,  unless,  indeed,  it  be  your  opinion  that  everybody 
has  written  immoral  books  who  has  availed  himself  of  a 
licence  of  speech  that  would  not  be  permitted  in  the 
polite  society  of,  shall  we  say,  Puddleton-on-Blink.  If 
this  be  your  opinion,  then,  Gentlemen  of  the  Jury,  as 
honest  men,  you  will  have  to  bring  in  a  rider  advising  the 
society  that  is  prosecuting  this  book  to  prosecute  also  the 
publishers  of  the  Bible  and  Shakespeare.  If  the  book 
before  you  goes,  all  that  I  shall  read  to  you  must  go  too. 
You  see  the  dilemma  in  which  this  Prosecution  has  placed 
you.  A  verdict  against  my  client  involves  a  condemna- 
tion of  the  Bible  itself. 

And  here  is  another  point  which,  perhaps,  has  not  been 
considered  by  the  members  of  the  Vigilance  Society,  that 
the  literature  of  all  the  world  is  to  be  found  in  the  libraries 
founded  by  the  State  or  by  Mr  Carnegie.  The  Bible  can 
be  obtained  in  these  libraries;  all  of  the  Latin  and  Greek 
writers  are  on  the  shelves  in  their  original  texts  and  some 
in  translations,  and  can  be  had  for  the  asking.  Chaucer, 
Suetonius,  Rabelais  and  Shakespeare  unexpurgated — 
think  of  it,  unexpurgated! — and  the  Elizabethan  poets 
and  dramatists!  What  dangerous  places  are  our  libraries 
— what  horrible  snares  Mr  Carnegie  has  set  for  the  feet 
of  our  children!  Plato  and  Horace  must  go,  although  we 
compel  our  children  to  read  them  in  our  schools.  All 
ancient  authors  contain  passages  coarser  than  those  com- 
plained of  in  this  book,  and  if  my  client's  book  be  con- 
demned you  are  all  accessories  after  the  fact,  for  you 
pay  taxes  for  the  purchase  of  Homer,  Aristophanes, 
Catullus,  and  in  our  own  time,  Balzac,  Flaubert,  Gautier, 


AVOWALS  115 

Hugo,  Zola — the  works  of  all  of  these  have  been  pur- 
chased with  your  money.  Out  of  your  pockets  came 
translations  of  Don  Quixote  which  contain  many  coarse 
passages.  You  shall  hear  the  scene  in  the  inn,  Gentlemen 
of  the  Jury;  you  shall  hear  it  and  you  will  be  able  to  say 
then  if  my  client  has  written  anything  exceeding  the  tale 
of  the  evil-smelling  servant  girl  who  goes  to  meet  the 
waggoner  and  slides  herself  by  mistake  into  Don  Quixote's 
bed.  And  many  are  the  passages  in  Goethe  and  in  Heine 
that  you  shall  hear,  every  one  of  which  is  likely  to  bring 
down  with  a  crash  our  whole  social  fabric.  You  shall 
hear,  too,  some  stories  from  Boccaccio,  and  if  you  do  not 
weary,  some  from  Brantome.  A  passage  or  two  from 
Plato  may  throw  some  light  upon  this  matter.  An  ode 
or  two  from  Horace.  But  we  will  not  anticipate.  Now, 
Gentlemen,  listen  to  some  passages  from  Chronicles 

Balderston.  Objection!  As  Attorney  for  the  Prose- 
cution, I  object  to  the  dragging  in  of  other  books  as 
immaterial  and  irrelevant.  We  are  not  discussing  the 
Bible  or  Shakespeare  or  Don  Quixote,  but  the  book  in 
the  dock,  and  you  must  conduct  this  case  according  to 
the  rules  of  evidence. 

Moore.  My  Lord  [addressing  my  black  cat,  who  slept 
like  a  lordship  on  the  Woolsack],  there  is  no  accepted 
standard  as  to  what  whould  be  printed  or  published.  No 
two  men  think  alike  on  this  subject,  and  no  man  thinks 
the  same  for  any  two  days  together.  It  is  impossible, 
therefore,  to  try  these  cases  as  you  would  judge  a  case 
of  theft.  A  man  takes  a  pocket-handkerchief  that  doesn't 
belong  to  him  and  everybody  is  agreed  that  he  shall  be 
punished,  but  nobody  can  know  what  shall  be  printed 
or  what  shall  not  be  printed  unless  a  standard  measure 
can  be  found.  Furthermore,  the  laws  under  which  this 
case  is  being  tried  have  been  applied  capriciously  and 
without  regard  to  any  standard,  but  there  is  a  standard 
by  which  they  ought  to  be  applied,  and  the  standard  is 


116  AVOWALS 

English  literature,  a  standard  based  upon  the  practice  of 
dozens  of  generations,  and  shall  these  twelve  men  judge 
my  client  without  a  knowledge  of  the  standard?  Trials 
at  law  can  only  be  judged  by  precedent,  and  every  book 
that  by  common  consent  has  passed  into  English  literature 
has  gone  to  make  up  the  standard  of  what  is  permissible 
and  is  a  precedent  in  this  case.  If,  for  instance,  a  really 
indecent  book  were  prosecuted  and  the  jury  should  acquit 
the  defendant  (the  jury  might  be  composed  of  men  with- 
out regard  for  public  morality),  the  book  could  be  sold  on 
a  barrow  in  the  streets  next  day,  a  miscarriage  of  justice 
so  shocking  that  the  verdict  of  the  higher  courts  would 
have  to  intervene,  and  the  plea  would  be  that  books  of 
this  kind  can  only  be  judged  upon  precedent.  Now,  my 
Lord,  I  submit  that  what  is  sauce  for  the  goose  is  sauce 
for  the  gander,  and  that  you  must  permit  this  book  to  be 
judged  upon  precedent. 

Balderston.  But,  my  Lord,  even  if  this  book  does  not 
exceed  in  licence  books  written  in  the  past,  because  a 
crime  was  committed  in  the  past  with  impunity  it  does 
not  follow  the  crime  should  be  allowed  to-day.  We  are 
dealing  not  with  the  past   but  with  the  present. 

Moore.  My  Lord,  I  submit  that  there  is  no  past  in 
literature  till  it  ceases  to  be  read,  and  books  I  have  men- 
tioned are  being  printed  and  sold  and  people  are  reading 
them. 

Balderston.  Well  done,  Moore.  Your  cross-examina- 
tion of  the  society's  secretary  would  be  amusing. 

Moore.  Thank  you,  Balderston,  for  your  good  opinion 
of  my  forensic  talents.  On  direct  examination  he  would 
have  expressed  his  horror  at  the  passages  complained  of, 
and  when  I  took  him  in  hand  I  would  have  him  tell  me 
why  he  disapproved  of  them,  leading  him  to  exaggerate 
their  importance,  and  when  I  had  got  him  to  say  he  had 
never  seen  their  like  in  print  before  I  would  ask  him  if  he 


AVOWALS  117 

had  read  the  Bible,  Shakespeare  and  Plato;  he  would  say 
he  had,  and  then  it  would  be  my  pleasure  to  read  passages 
from  Deuteronomy,  The  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor,  The 
Symposium,  and  to  ask  him  if  the  passages  I  had  read  did 
not  exceed  in  licence  any  in  the  prosecuted  book.  Don't 
try  to  wriggle,  I  say,  answer  yes  or  no. 

Balderston.  If  you  have  cast  me  for  the  r61e  of  the 
secretary — I  answer:  they  do. 

Moore.  Why  then  do  you  not  prosecute  the  publishers 
of  these  books? 

Balderston.  The  books  you  mention  are  great  litera- 
ture; their  authors  wrote  better  than  your  client,  and 
according  to  the  taste  of  their  time. 

Moore.  We  are  not  here  to  discuss  aesthetics,  Mr. 
Balderston  but  morals,  and  as  life  is  more  important  than 
literature  I  ask  you  to  agree  that  if  a  book  be  harmful  it 
should  be  stopped,  no  matter  how  well  it  is  written. 

Balderston.  I  am  not  so  sure,  for  good  writing 

Moore.  The  Bible  and  Shakespeare  have  not  proved 
harmful,  for  they  are  well  written,  that  is  your  contention; 
then,  my  Lord,  I  should  say,  turning  to  the  judge:  the 
witness's  admissions  seem  to  me  to  entail  a  change  in  the 
pleadings.  The  pleading  will  have  to  be  altered  that  on 
aesthetic  grounds  my  client's  book  must  be  condemned, 
but  there  is  no  law  whereby  a  book  may  be  burnt  and 
its  publisher  punished  because  it  is  not  sufficiently  well 
written.  It  might  be  well  if  such  a  law  were  in  existence, 
but  I  submit  that  no  such  law  is  in  existence. 

Balderston.  I  think  the  judge  would  here  take  the 
case  from  the  jury  and  throw  it  out  of  court.  But  if  the 
society  won  and  suppressed  the  book  in  question,  I  am 
sure  your  cross-examination  would  prey  upon  the  con- 
science of  the  secretary,  and  lead  to  attacks  upon  the 
publishers  of  classics. 

Moore.  Let  us  see  where  logic  will  lead  the  crusaders 
if  they  be  sincere.    We  will  suppose  them  to  be  prompted 


118  AVOWALS 

by  the  conviction  that  all  literature  containing  passages 
such  as  abound  in  the  classical  writers  should  be  con- 
demned, and  that,  after  becoming  conscientious  objectors 
against  the  payment  of  taxes,  to  support  libraries  where 
people  can  read  Boccaccio,  they  have  been  fortunate 
enough  to  secure  juries  willing  to  condemn  all  the  writers 
that  the  world  has  hitherto  been  in  the  habit  of  regarding 
with  reverence,  and  at  length  had  finished  literature  off, 
leaving  only  Miss  Austen.  But  there  are  some  coarse 
passages  in  Miss  Austen;  she  talks  quite  openly  of  ladies 
being  in  the  family  way,  and  novels  should  be  written  in 
accordance  with  the  most  susceptible  conscience.  So 
away  with  her  to  the  burning.  Even  then  the  beginning 
of  the  end  will  not  be  in  sight.  Our  crusaders  will  have 
to  proceed  against  all  the  newspapers  that  publish  stories 
of  the  unhappy  marriages  the  divorce  court  dissolves. 
But  the  suppression  of  the  Sunday  papers  will  not  com- 
plete the  task;  it  is  possible  that  the  most  energetic,  the 
whole  hoggers,  if  I  may  express  myself  so,  will  think  that 
to  look  upon  the  Hermes  of  Praxiteles  will  tempt  a  woman 
to  leave  the  spouse  whose  shoulders  do  not  rise  to  the 
level  of  her  aspirations.  We  must,  therefore,  so  they  say, 
proceed  against  public  art  galleries,  break  up  many  statues, 
and  burn  pictures,  for  nobody  can  deny  that  some  of  the 
greatest  of  all  paintings  which  hang  unmolested  in  art 
galleries,  to  which  admission  is  unrestricted,  depict  mytho- 
logical subjects — the  Jupiter  and  Antiope  of  Correggio  in 
the  Louvre,  for  example — which  could  not  be  described  in 
English  literature  with  the  same  fidelity  without  drawing 
down  upon  the  author  immediate  prosecution.  Yet  surely 
to  describe  an  action  in  words  is  one  degree  further  re- 
moved from  nature  than  to  portray  it  in  paint,  and  it 
would  be  difficult  to  make  plain  to  a  jury  that  illicit 
emotions  may  be  stirred  up  by  a  written  description  of  a 
statue,  and  of  a  picture,  whereas  the  picture  and  the 
statue  do  not  awaken  any  such  thoughts  in  the  beholder. 


AVOWALS  119 

But  after  the  closing  of  our  public  galleries  of  paintings 
and  sculpture,  much  work  still  remains  for  our  reformers 
to  accomplish;  they  must  go  into  the  theatre,  and  every 
skirt  must  descend  to  the  ankle  of  its  wearer,  and  then 
they  must  go  into  society — disguised  as  waiters,  perhaps, 
but  they  will  have  to  attend  evening  parties — so  that 
they  may  inform  themselves  regarding  the  modesty  of 
the  dresses  that  are  worn.  In  society,  ladies  wear  their 
dresses  cut  low,  and  when  these  are  brought  into  court 
it  would  be  very  difficult  to  convince  a  jury  that  the  ladies 
wearing  them  are  not  influenced  by  a  desire  to  attract  the 
opposite  sex.  I  should  plead  that  no  book  can  excite 
such  warm  emotions  as  a  lady  whose  dresses  are  cut  very 
low,  and  in  answer  to  my  argument  the  judge  would  make 
the  order  that  henceforth  all  girls  must  be  clothed  to  the 
ears.  But  whether  dressed  or  undressed,  a  woman's  eyes, 
as  she  looks  across  the  table,  make  a  more  insidious  appeal 
than  a  library  full  of  books.  So  glances  must  be  con- 
trolled; drink  and  meat  inflame  the  passions,  and  will 
have  to  be  rationed.  The  crusaders  will  have  to  give  ear 
to  table  talk,  and  produce  their  shorthand  notes,  jottings 
taken  down  as  they  hand  the  dishes.  And  when  the 
danger  of  champagne  and  talk  is  removed,  there  will  re- 
main a  danger  which  I  fear  the  crusaders,  however  vigi- 
lant, will  find  impossible  to  remove — the  spring  days. 

Balderston.  Truly  a  grave  danger,  and  one  from  which 
there  seems  to  be  no  escape,  so  with  your  permission  we 
will  return  to  a  subject  easier  of  elucidation  than  what 
is  to  be  done  with  the  spring  days — the  motives  actuating 
our  social  reformers.  The  word  blackmailer  I  have  heard 
pronounced  by  you,  but  you  do  not  believe  them  to  be  all 
blackmailers,  persecutors,  hypocrites? 

Moore.  I  do  not  remember  using  those  words,  but  I 
may  have  implied  them,  therefore  I  hasten  to  say  that 
there  are  many  sincere  people  among  the  crusaders,  sin- 
cere but  misguided,  possessed,  once  more  I  say  it,  by  the 


120  AVOWALS 

absurd  idea  that  morality  depends  on  the  last  novel.  No 
doubt  there  are  many  dupes  among  our  social  reformers. 
But  they  are  not  all  dupes.  It  is  difficult  to  believe  that 
the  secretaries  and  treasurers  of  these  associations  who 
circularise  the  public  when  they  succeed  in  getting  a 
book  condemned  are  dupes.  The  tone  of  the  circular 
they  issue  betrays  them  to  those  who  can  read  between 
the  lines,  and  I  believe  it  to  be  important  to  morality 
as  well  as  to  literature  that  publishers  should  combine 
against  the  blackmailer.  The  word  slips  out,  so  inherent 
is  it  in  the  subject,  for  blackmail  plays  a  part  in  the 
crusade,  though  perhaps  not  a  very  large  part.  The 
original  motive  is  the  desire  to  persecute;  for  the  desire 
to  persecute  is  in  us  all.  I  should  like  to  persecute  the 
Post  Impressionists,  and  am  glad  the  means  to  do  so  are 
not  at  my  disposal. 

Balderston.  Who  can  say  that  he  can  withstand 
temptation?  Increase  the  temptation  sufficiently  and 
every  man  is  a  sinner. 

Moore.  It  may  be  doubted  if  tidings  of  a  sinless  dio- 
cese would  awaken  much  enthusiasm  among  the  higher 
moralists,  for  without  sin  there  would  be  no  repentance. 
And  in  what  trite  and  lack-lustre  world  would  the  moral- 
ists find  themselves,  yearning  by  the  banks  of  the  Thames 
for  the  good  old  days  of  sin  to  return  to  them.  Has  it 
not  been  said  that  without  repentance  we  cannot  rejoice 
over  much? 

Balderston.  The  text  you  have  in  mind  that  joy  shall 
be  in  heaven  over  one  sinner  that  repenteth  more  than 
over  ninety  and  nine  just  persons  which  need  no  repent- 
ance, is  to  be  found  only  in  Luke. 

Moore.  And  it  is  unlike  Jesus,  altogether  unlike  Jesus, 
a  wholly  unacceptable  text.  I  suspect  a  Bishop.  But  let 
us  return  to  the  Vigilant  Society  at  the  time  of  the  Vize- 
telly  prosecution,  for  it  provides  us  with  an  exemplar 
that  will  never  be  surpassed,  one  before  whom  Mohere's 


AVOWALS  121 

Tartuffe  sinks  into  insignificance — Captain  Verney.  Of 
the  Captain's  personal  appearance  a  record  is  kept  no 
doubt  at  the  old  Bailey,  but  I  have  not  asked  to  see  it 
lest  it  should  not  conform  to  the  image  I  have  in  mind,  a 
tall,  thin  man,  somewhat  high  shoulders,  breaking  out 
into  short  sentences  occasionally.  A  slightly  pompous 
man,  he  must  have  been,  for  a  certain  pomposity  was 
necessary  to  win  the  admiration  of  the  entire  society  of 
which  Captain  Verney  was  a  prominent  member,  very 
much  looked  up  to  by  all,  especially  the  ladies,  and  it  is 
interesting,  indeed  instructive,  to  imagine  the  little  stir 
that  animates  the  committee  when  he  enters  the  office 
and  takes  a  chair  at  the  long  table.  The  members  might 
be  waiting  for  their  secretary,  who  has  gone  to  fetch  a 
number  of  books  in  which  the  Captain  has  marked 
doubtful  passages,  passages  regarding  which  he  would 
like  his  committee  to  express  an  opinion.  It  is  pleasant 
to  imagine  the  ladies'  and  gentlemen's  voices  murmuring 
among  themselves :  how  very  shocking;  yes,  very  shocking. 
Would  you  care  to  look  at  this,  Mrs  A.,  and  when  you've 
read  it,  will  you  pass  it  on  to  Mrs  B.,  who  is  anxious  to  see 
it?  She  has  heard  the  book  spoken  about.  Mrs  B.  agrees 
with  Mrs  C,  and  all  look  up  approvingly  at  the  secretary, 
a  short,  thick-set  man  with  a  beard,  and  a  devout  ex- 
pression in  his  eyes  as  he  handles  the  suspected  books. 
His  voice,  we  cannot  imagine  it  otherwise  than  as  subdued 
when  he  tells  that  the  unbiased  opinion  of  the  committee 
regarding  the  sad  necessity  of  a  prosecution  would  be  of 
great  value.  To  examine  all  the  passages,  to  read  them 
aloud  in  hushed  tones,  to  discuss  them,  occupies  a  great 
deal  of  time,  and  nothing  is  settled  definitely  until  Cap- 
tain Verney,  turning  the  pages  quickly,  murmurs :  shock- 
ing, shocking;  quite  shocking.  Then  everybody  knows 
there  is  to  be  a  prosecution,  and  faces  brighten.  But 
Captain  Verney  seems  perplexed  and  restless,  and  it  is  not/ 
long  before  he  takes  out  his  watch,  and  the  thought  passes 


122  AVOWALS 

round:  he  has  gotten  an  appointment — which  is  indeed 
the  case.  I  regret  it,  he  says,  but  I  must  leave  you.  There 
is  not  much  more  to  say,  and  we  are  all  agreed  upon  the 
painful  necessity  of  stopping  the  circulation  of  this  filth. 
You  have  my  marginal  notes,  and  if  any  difficulty  should 
arise,  I  shall  be  here  to  give  my  opinion,  whatever  that 
may  be  worth,  next  Friday.  I'm  sorry  to  have  to  leave 
you.  He  looks  at  his  watch  once  more.  As  it  is  I  shall 
be  a  few  minutes  late,  but  perhaps  by  taking  a  cab  and 
driving  quickly  I  may  arrive  in  time.  On  these  words 
Captain  Verney  goes  away  to  keep  an  appointment  with 
a  lady  who  has  many  acquaintances  among  young  nursery- 
maids aged  from  sixteen  to  eighteen  years  of  age.  And 
one  day  the  news  arrives  at  the  office  of  the  Vigilance 
Society  that  Captain  Verney  has  been  charged  with  the 
abduction  of  a  young  cook.  It  appears  he  took  her  to 
Paris,  the  secretary  murmurs,  in  reply  to  questions,  and 
the  sisterhood  claims  that  it  must  be  a  cleverly  arranged 
plot  laid  by  those  who  would  obstruct  us  in  our  work;  or 

it  may  be  a  mistake.     Do  you  not  think  so,  Mr.  X ? 

The  secretary  shakes  his  head.  I  fear  it  is  only  too  true. 
A  few  days  after  the  magistrate  sent  Captain  Verney 
for  trial. 

The  story  I'm  relating  came  to  pass  not  later  than 
five  and  twenty  years  ago,  and  never  a  year  goes  by 
that  I  do  not  ponder  on  the  psychology  of  the  extraordi- 
nary Captain  Verney,  asking  myself  vainly  how  he  justi- 
fied himself  to  himself  in  the  middle  of  the  night  when 
sleep  was  far  from  his  eyelids.  It  is  easy  to  answer  that 
he  did  not  try  to  justify  himself,  but  it  is  hard  for  me  to 
imagine  a  man  leading  a  double  life  without  trying  to 
come  to  terms  with  himself,  if  I  may  so  word  it.  A  hun- 
dred times  I  have  asked  myself  from  what  point  of  view 
he  started  on  his  extraordinary  career. 

Balderston.  But  is  not  your  curiosity  tempting  you 
into  the  very  sin  that  you  deplore,  taking  pleasure  in  the 


AVOWALS  123 

punishment  of  the  sinner,  if  not  in  the  punishment,  in 
the  psychology,  for  in  doing  this  are  you  not  congratulat- 
ing yourself  all  the  while  that  you  are  not  as  he  is? 

Moore.  It  has  been  said  often  that  nothing  in  hu- 
manity should  be  alien  to  us,  but  this  man  seems  further 
from  us  than  anybody  in  history.  It  is  true  that  no 
man  knows  another  man,  no  more  than  the  beast  that  he 
tracks  in  the  forest  or  the  beast  that  leaps  on  his  knees 
as  he  sits  by  the  evening  fire,  and  that  is  why  justice  is  the 
delusion  of  the  imperfectly  educated.  I'm  sorry,  Balder- 
ston,  if  any  note  of  jubilation  appeared  in  my  voice  when 
I  spoke  of  Captain  Verney's  downfall.  If  there  was,  I 
apologise  to  his  shade.  All  the  same  it  is  a  terrible  thing 
that  a  society  that  counted  at  least  one  Captain  Verney 
among  its  members  should  have  been  allowed  to  do  to 
death  poor  old  Henry  Vizetelly. 

Balderston.  But  is  there  no  book  you  would  condemn, 
not  even  such  as  certain  are  given  to  collecting? 

Moore.  We  are  discussing  literature,  not  indecency, 
and  as  I  have  already  said,  there  can  be  no  excuse  for  mis- 
taking one  for  the  other;  literature  cannot  become  porno- 
graphic, for  the  subject  of  literature  is  the  normal  life  of 
man,  the  commonplace,  which,  when  enlightened  by 
genius,  becomes  the  universal,  and  there  are  twenty  other 
reasons  why  art  is  never  pornographic. 

Balderston.  But  tell  me,  do  you  deny  that  literature 
has  any  influence  upon  conduct? 

Moore.  Life  is  but  influences.  We  are  influenced  by 
all  we  see,  hear  or  smell;  the  touch  of  a  hand,  a  flower 
may  influence  our  conduct,  but  not  literature,  or  rarely; 
the  appeal  of  literature  is  mainly  intellectual. 

Balderston.  You  have  mentioned  that  our  public 
libraries  contain  all  modern  and  classical  writers  and 
yet  remain  unmolested  by  the  crusaders,  and  you  know, 
of  course,  that  these  books  in  their  original  languages 
are  invariably  displayed  openly  on  the  shelves,  together, 


124  AVOWALS 

perhaps,  with  Bowdlerised  English  translations,  while 
complete  English  renderings  are  kept  in  locked  cases  and 
doled  out  at  the  discretion  of  the  librarian  to  persons 
thought  qualified  to  read  them.  If  books  ought  not  to 
be  read  in  English  ought  they  to  be  read  by  persons  of 
superior  education,  when,  as  Gibbon  remarked  in  prefac- 
ing that  Greek  footnote  on  the  behaviour  of  the  Empress 
Theodora,  they  are  veiled  in  the  obscurity  of  a  learned 
language? 

Moore.  The  argument  put  forward  by  our  crusaders 
is  that  licentious  literature  (I  use  the  word  licentious  in 
its  literal  sense)  appeals  to  the  passions,  inflames  them 
and  undermines  the  health  of  the  nation.  If  that  be  so, 
why  should  these  books  be  lent  to  educated  people  and 
not  to  the  uneducated?  Are  we  to  assume  then  that 
education  does  away  with  the  passions?  Sappho  did  not 
lack  education,  nor  did  George  Sand,  and  how  many  more 
might  be  mentioned;  every  Don  Juan  will  tell  you  that 
the  only  women  worth  while  are  learned  women.  The 
question  we  are  discussing  is  beset  with  prejudices,  con- 
ventions, subterfuges  and  obtusities.  You  spoke  just  now 
of  Bowdlerised  versions,  but  Bowdlerised  versions  of  the 
Bible,  of  Shakespeare,  of  Plato,  are  unacceptable  and  will 
always  remain  unacceptable,  for  nobody  is  agreed  as  to 
what  should  be  left  out  and  what  should  be  retained. 
There  is  no  agreement  among  the  emendators  themselves. 
If  they  were  locked  up  in  different  rooms  they  would 
produce  different  versions  of  Plato,  Shakespeare  and  the 
Bible,  and  be  at  quarrel  the  moment  they  were  let  out, 
and  the  locking  up  of  books  in  the  libraries  to  be  doled 
out  to  persons  qualified  to  read  them  calls  up  to  my  mind 
an  amusing  scene  of  a  librarian  questioning  a  girl  as  to  her 
age  and  the  education  she  has  received,  and  looking  into 
her  face,  trying  to  determine  from  the  profile  as  well  as 
from  the  full  face  whether  she  is  qualified  to  read  Sterne 
in  an  unexpurgated  version — different  expurgations  set 


AVOWALS  125 

for  different  ages:  one  for  fifteen,  another  for  eighteen, 
another  for  twenty-one,  and  putting  the  same  questions 
to  a  boy  who  saunters  up  while  the  girl  is  at  the  counter. 
Are  the  boy  and  girl  to  be  called  upon  to  affirm  upon  oath 
that  they  are  not  actuated  by  desire  to  read  spicy  passages, 
but  are  merely  anxious  to  acquaint  themselves  with  the 
literature  of  a  certain  period?  How  can  the  girl  or  boy 
take  such  an  oath?  They  do  not  know  why  they  wish  to 
read  these  books;  motives  are  complicated  things;  we 
are  not  governed  by  one  motive,  but  by  many.  After 
scrutinising  the  boy's  face  and  the  girl's  face,  and  asking 
himself  again  and  again:  Is  this  one  qualified?  the  li- 
brarian hands  Roderick  Random  to  one  and  The  Senti- 
mental Journey  to  the  other  and  retires  to  his  desk,  to 
become  a  prey,  soon  after,  to  scruples  of  conscience.  Was 
there  not  a  look  in  that  girl's  eye  which  should  have  made 
it  clear  to  him  that  she  was  not  a  person  whose  tempera- 
ment allowed  her  to  read  The  Sentimental  Journey?  And 
the  boy?  Hours  later  he  wakes  up  in  bed  with  the  cry; 
I  was  wrong,  he  was  not  qualified;  I  must  get  that  book 
back  in  the  morning!  The  librarian  himself  does  not 
know  why  he  reads  certain  books;  his  motives  are  mixed, 
as  yours  or  mine  are.  Only  God  can  see  into  the  heart. 
My  dear  friend,  John  Eglington,  could  look  at  an  appli- 
cant for  ever  without  being  able  to  decide  what  his 
motives  were.  The  librarian  need  not  trouble  himself 
about  motives  as  long  as  the  applicant  is  content  to  read 
Boccaccio,  Brantome,  Rabelais  in  the  original:  on  the 
relation  of  literature  to  morals  one  can  unwind  for  ever 
without  coming  to  the  end  of  Folly  spool. 

Balderston.  In  New  York  City  the  Anglo-Saxon  atti- 
tude with  which  you  are  familiar  exists  side  by  side,  and 
on  perfectly  good  terms  with  Continental  tolerance.  We 
have  in  New  York  two  millions  of  people  who  read  and 
speak  and  hear  in  their  theatres  their  own  language,  and 
we  let  them  read  what  books  and  attend  what  plays  they 


126  AVOWALS 

like,  without  the  slightest  regard  for  the  Anglo-Saxon 
laws  of  the  land,  so  long  as  they  leave  the  English  lan- 
guage alone;  and  while  vigilance  societies  prosecute  new 
novels  in  English  more  stringently  in  New  York  than 
in  London,  there  is  no  book  in  any  other  language  that 
cannot  be  openly  displayed  for  sale,  whatever  its  char- 
acter, without  risk  of  interference. 

Moore.  I  never  heard  of  a  prosecution  being  brought 
in  London  against  a  book  in  a  foreign  language. 

Balderston.  The  vigilance  societies  in  New  York 
guard  that  other  palladium  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race,  the 
sanctity  of  the  Sabbath,  as  closely  as  they  preserve  moral- 
ity by  watching  over  new  novels  in  English.  No  Broad- 
way theatre  is  permitted  to  perform  plays  on  Sunday, 
and  not  long  ago,  when  a  stage  society  tried  to  put  on  a 
serious  play  for  its  own  members  only,  on  Sunday  even- 
ings, the  only  night  when  theatres  and  actors  were  avail- 
able, the  police,  at  the  instance  of  a  vigilance  society, 
occupied  the  house  and  prevented  the  performance. 

Moore.  I  see  nothing  surprising  in  that. 

Balderston.  Only  this,  that  in  the  foreign  quarter  of 
the  city,  as  on  the  Continent,  Sunday  is  the  biggest 
theatrical  day  of  the  week.  Two  performances  are  given, 
in  German,  Yiddish  and  Italian,  of  plays  by  leading 
European  dramatists  which  if  presented  on  Broadway 
even  on  weekdays  would  land  the  managers  in  jail,  or, 
alternatively,  in  bankruptcy,  and  the  Vigilance  societies 
never  object.  It  follows  that  what  desecrates  the  Sab- 
bath on  Broadway  does  not  desecrate  it  on  the  Bowery. 
Not  only  does  morality,  as  you  have  said,  seem  to  depend 
not  upon  literature  but  only  upon  literature  in  the  Eng- 
lish language,  but  our  Vigilance  societies  also  seem  to  be 
of  the  opinion  that  the  Sabbath  can  be  desecrated  only  in 
the  English  language. 

Moore.  The  smut  hound  gives  tongue  at  all  kinds  of 
game;  an  utterly  undependable  cur:  at  this  very  moment 


AVOWALS  127 

he  is  baying  in  the  coverts.  At  what?  rabbit,  hare  or  fox. 
Hark  to  Priapus !  cries  Mudie.  At  him,  Libertina!  shouts 
Smith.     A  mixed  pack,  Balderston. 


CHAPTER  4. 

THE  most  that  I  can  hope  for  to  relieve  the  monotony 
of  Ebury  Street,  a  long  narrow  slum,  in  which  I  took 
a  house  in  the  Coronation  year,  is  a  new  idea;  and  one 
has  come  to  entertain  me  to-day — namely,  that  the  Eng- 
lish poets  have  beautiful  names,  and  the  English  novelists 
dowdy  ones,  all  but  George  Meredith,  who  was  no  novelist, 
and  will  be  remembered  by  his  verses.  In  the  discovery 
of  a  name's  power  Bacon  was  before  me;  for  he  knew  the 
importance  of  a  name  in  literature,  and  chose  the  most 
beautiful  name  of  all;  and  with  each  play  Shakespeare 
grew  more  and  more  like  his  name,  more  elusive,  more 
recondite;  and  for  the  sake  of  the  name  let  no  edition  of 
Bacon's  plays  be  put  on  the  market.  The  plays  are  by  the 
name.  Another  name,  Andrew  Marvell's,  might  have 
signed  the  poems,  but  the  plays  and  sonnets  required  a 
larger  name.  John  Milton  is  a  name  to  resound  for  ages, 
a  name  for  a  Puritan  poet.  And  we  shall  have  to  go  far 
afield  to  find  a  better  name  than  Wordsworth  for  a  pas- 
toral poet.  No  name  is  more  apt  than  Alfred  for  a  Vic- 
torian poet,  and  it  may  be  doubted  if  anyone  is  so  blind 
that  he  cannot  see  that  the  poems  are  sometimes  Tenny- 
son, and  sometimes  Alfred,  and  that  some  are  by  Alfred 
Tennyson?  Swinburne  too  is  a  significant  name,  and 
when  we  add  the  Algernon  Charles  Swinburne,  the  name 
is  the  reed  through  which  every  wind  blows  music.  .  .  . 
Atalanta  is  by  Swinburne  alone,  the  poems  and  ballads 
are  by  Charles  and  Algernon,  and  the  trivialities  of  that 
volume  we  attribute  to  Algernon  alone. 


128  AVOWALS 

That  the  name  the  writer  bears  should  interpret  the 
quality  of  his  writing  will  only  seem  absurd  to  him  who 
has  never  been  awakened  by  a  name,  thrilled  and  inspired 
by  a  name  as  I  was  on  the  morning  related  in  Confessions 
of  a  Young  Man,  when  the  family  coach  lumbered  towards 
Hedford  in  the  county  of  Gal  way,  the  sunlight  striking 
through  the  glass,  my  parents  sitting  opposite  to  me, 
talking  of  a  novel  the  world  was  reading,  a  story  of  a  lady 
who  married  her  groom  because  he  had  violet  eyes,  Lady 
Audley,  who  was  forgotten  for  a  while  in  the  delight  of 
tearing  down  fruit  trees  and  chasing  a  cat,  but  my  psychic 
eyes  were  all  the  while  fixed  on  the  book,  and  when  we 
returned  home  I  read  it  and  its  successors  till  I  came  to 
a  book  called  The  Doctor's  Wife,  a  derivative  Madame 
Bovary,  a  doctor's  wife  who  read  Shelley  and  Byron.  His 
name,  Shelley's,  of  course,  burst  like  a  star  through  the 
shades  of  my  dreamy  youth,  and  escaping  from  the  school- 
room, I  ransacked  the  library  to  find  at  last  a  small  pocket 
edition,  long  out  of  print,  no  doubt.  It  opened  at  The 
Sensitive  Plant,  and  to  read  that  the  young  winds  fed 
the  sensitive  plant  seemed  so  wonderful  that  I  could  not 
be  kept  out  of  my  mother's  bedroom,  but  must  needs  read 
it  to  her  there  and  then.  Queen  Mab  was  read  by  the 
shores  of  a  pale  green  Irish  lake.  Byron,  too,  was  often 
in  my  hands;  and  having  discovered  two  great  poets  by 
the  light  of  their  names,  it  was  natural  that  I  should  seek 
again.  The  name  that  lured  me  on  this  third  time  was 
Kirke  White,  and  though  the  syllables  did  not  promise 
another  Shelley  they  led  me  to  expect  a  proud  and  lonely 
spirit.  Messenger  after  messenger  was  dispatched  to 
Castlebar,  urging  the  bookseller  to  inquire  again  for  the 
volume.  I  was  in  the  pantry  waiting  for  my  messenger  to 
return  from  Castlebar  with  it,  and  seizing  it,  a  small 
volume  in  red  boards,  I  retired  to  a  room  at  the  head  of 
the  stairs.  But  the  first  stanza  lacked  the  magic  of  the 
line:   And  the  young  winds  fed  it  with  silver  dew;    the 


AVOWALS  129 

second  was  duller  than  the  first,  and  for  many  years  Kirke 
White  cast  a  doubt  over,  if  it  did  not  utterly  destroy,  my 
belief  in  name  augury. 

Some  years  after  a  sculptor  spoke  Balzac's  formidable 
name  at  the  door  of  his  studio,  and  I  felt  a  thrill,  but, 
discouraged  by  the  Kirke  White  episode,  did  not  buy  a 
French  grammar  and  dictionary.  If  it  had  not  been 
for  thy  fraudulent  name,  Kirke  White,  the  reviewers 
would  have  been  in  the  possession  of  an  infallible  guide 
to  literature  for  the  last  five  and  thirty  years;  but  for  thy 
name  they  are  still  groping  in  darkness,  confounding  the 
English  novel  with  English  literature,  words  written 
yesterday,  and  after  writing  them  I  asked  after  Kirke 
White,  for  the  first  time,  I  swear  it,  and  learnt  that  he  was 
intended  to  be  a  clergyman,  and  died  at  twenty-four.  A 
sort  of  Keats,  I  said,  without  Keats'  talent.  And  fell  to 
thinking  that  to  die  at  twenty-four  is  a  poetic  act;  and 
out  of  my  meditation  the  thought  arose,  why  it  should 
have  arisen  I  cannot  tell,  but  I  did  say  to  myself:  Kirke 
White's  name  is  not  good  enough  for  a  poet,  but  it  might 
have  made  a  good  English  novelist.  A  better  name  it 
certainly  is  than  any  we  discover  among  our  novelists — 
only  colourless  names,  dry-as-dust  or  vulgar  names  like 
mackintoshes,  names  that  are  as  squashy  as  goloshes. 
Trollope!  did  anybody  ever  bear  a  name  that  predicted 
a  style  more  trollopy.  Anthony,  too,  in  front  of  it,  to  make 
matters  worse.  And  Walter  Scott  is  a  jog-trot  name,  a 
round-faced  name,  a  snub-nosed,  spectacled,  pot-bellied 
name,  a  placid,  beneficent,  worthy  old  bachelor  name;  a 
name  that  evoked  all  conventional  ideas  and  formulas,  a 
Grub  Street  name,  a  nerveless  name,  an  arm-chair  name, 
an  old  oak  and  Abbotsford  name;  a  name  to  improvise 
novels,  to  buy  farms  with.  Thackeray  is  a  name  for  a 
footman;  the  syllables  clatter  like  plates,  and  when  we 
hear  it  we  say:  we  shall  want  the  carriage  at  half -past 
two,  Thackeray. 


130  AVOWALS 

And  Dickens  is  a  name  for  a  page-boy,  surely.  And  if 
I  did  not  believe  that  Providence  bestows  names  upon  us 
in  harmony  with  the  books  we  are  ordained  to  write,  the 
name  of  George  Eliot  would  convert  me.  The  writer's 
real  name  was  Marian  Evans,  a  chaw-bacon,  thick-loined 
name,  but  withal  pleasing,  redeemed  by  its  character,  like 
the  shire  horse.  But  the  Providence  that  shapes  the 
writer  to  its  ends  required  a  hollow,  barren  name,  without 
sign  of  human  presence  upon  it,  one  reminiscent  of  the 
strange  sea-shells  that  are  found  only  on  the  mantel-pieces 
of  Pentonville  front  parlours — striped  backed,  white- 
lipped  shells  in  which  it  is  impossible  to  believe  that  a 
living  creature  ever  dwelt.  I  will  put  it  to  the  reader's 
honour.  Hand  on  your  heart,  reader,  could  the  name, 
George  Eliot,  have  written  Miss  Austen's  novels?  Of 
course  it  could  not,  nor  could  a  name  like  George  Eliot 
have  written  The  Human  Comedy;  certainly  not,  cries 
the  truthful  reader.  Could  any  name  have  written  The 
Human  Comedy  but  the  name  that  did  write  it:  the  great 
name  designed  by  the  writer  for  the  work?  Balzac  added 
the  particule,  feeling  it  to  be  necessary  for  his  work.  No 
one,  cries  a  full  chorus  of  readers,  and  having  thanked 
them  for  their  unanimity,  I  continue:  when  I  heard  this 
sonorous  name  for  the  first  time,  a  Cyclopean  city  rose  up 
before  me,  outlined  against  rich  skies  mysteriously  violet. 
Gustave  Flaubert  flows  on  the  wind  like  a  banner,  and 
J.  K.  Huysmans  evokes  the  crooked  soul  of  middle  ages. 
The  K.  carries  the  mind  far  away  down  the  zigzagging 
Gothic  alleys,  up  high  stairs,  at  the  top  of  which  a  bell- 
ringer  sits  dreaming  over  the  music  of  the  bells,  deploring 
the  while  the  difficulty  of  getting  a  fine  oil  for  the  pre- 
paration of  a  salad.  .  .  .  But  a  beautiful  name  was  required 
to  write  stories  as  shapely  as  Greek  vases,  and  the  writer 
of  the  most  comely  stories  in  the  world  bore  the  most 
comely  name  in  the  world — Ivan  Tourgueneff.  Hearken 
to  the  musical  syllables — Ivan  Tourgueneff;  repeat  them 


AVOWALS  131 

again  and  again,  and  before  long  the  Fates  coiled  in  their 
elusive  draperies  in  the  British  Museum  will  begin  to  rise 
up  before  your  eyes;  the  tales  of  the  great  Scythian  tale- 
teller are  as  harmonious  as  they,  and  we  ask  in  vain  why 
the  Gods  should  have  placed  the  light  of  Greece  in  the 
hands  of  a  Scythian. 

This  much  has  been  learnt  in  the  Gosse-Moore  conver- 
sations, that  if  an  art  has  been  given  to  a  country  in  which 
she  may  express  herself  supremely,  all  the  other  arts  are 
minor  in  that  country.  The  genius  of  England  went  into 
poetry,  and  in  the  course  of  our  literary  inquest  we 
stumbled  across  the  curious  fact  that  Tourgueneff  failed  to 
appreciate  Balzac — a  fact  reported  by  trustworthy  biog- 
raphers without  comment,  and  we  are  in  doubt  whether 
he  thought  the  subject  worthy  of  his  further  considera- 
tion, or  whether  he  wished  to  excite  our  curiosity  by  a 
mere  statement,  as  Goethe  did  when  he  said  that  it  would 
have  been  better  if  Luther  had  never  been  born.  But  no 
comparison  is  available.  Goethe's  life  was  planned  with 
a  view  to  occupying  the  literary  and  scientific  attention 
of  the  world  for  centuries :  and  there  can  be  little  doubt 
that  he  dreamed  of  the  last  man  lighting  his  lamp  to  read 
the  autobiography.  That  nobody  reads  I  said  one  even- 
ing while  walking  home  with  John  Eglington  after  the 
closing  of  the  National  Library,  relating  to  him  the 
many  various  studies  in  which  Goethe  spent  his  day: 
Winding  up  with  some  midwifery,  John  muttered  con- 
temptuously, and  for  no  purpose  but  to  continue  a  little 
dribble  of  ink  in  the  morning. 

John  is  wise  enough  to  set  little  store  on  the  value  of 
writing.  And  in  this  he  is  like  Tourgueneff,  who  wrote, 
for  it  was  as  natural  for  him  to  write  as  to  breathe;  and 
when  he  had  said  all  he  had  to  say  about  the  world  he 
had  been  pitchforked  into  he  told  the  editor  of  a  news- 
paper who  had  come  to  him  for  a  story  that  he  had  laid 
down  the  pen  for  ever.     He  did  not  speak  in  the  hope 


132  AVOWALS 

of  instigating  the  thought  that  the  world  would  hence- 
forth be  poorer;  he  knew  the  value  of  life,  and  never 
sought  to  obtain  a  title  from  the  Tsar;  he  wore  no  decora- 
tions, refrained  from  literary  banquets,  and,  when  he 
went  abroad,  from  speaking  in  the  name  of  Russia.  He 
did  not  try  to  be  wise,  he  was  wise,  so  very  wise  that 
he  was  content  to  be,  incredible  as  it  may  seem,  as  wise 
and  no  wiser  than  nature  made  him.  As  much  cannot 
be  said  of  Goethe,  who  was  not,  perhaps,  as  pompous  as 
George  Henry  Lewes  makes  him  appear.  No  man, 
happily,  was  ever  that,  but  we  must  not  allow  George 
Henry  Lewes  to  divert  us  from  our  path,  and  to  come 
back  to  it  I  will  say  that  I  believe  that  when  Tour- 
gueneff spoke  depreciatingly  of  Balzac  he  said  just  what 
was  in  his  mind,  simple  Slav,  that  he  was,  thinking, 
and  thinking  rightly,  that  his  inability  to  appreciate 
Balzac's  genius  was  not  a  matter  worthy  of  many  words. 
He  knew,  but  he  did  not  brood  on  the  fact  that  he  knew, 
and  it  was  part  of  his  genius  to  be  able  to  put  things  aside 
that  did  not  concern  him,  for  there  was  a  good  deal  more 
of  the  simple  and  natural,  of  the  lilies  of  the  field  that  do 
not  toil,  nor  do  they  spin,  in  Tourgueneff  than  in  Goethe, 
a  sort  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  he  was  in  art,  who  did  not 
need  to  make  mystery  by  muddying  pure  water  as  Goethe 
was  prone  to  do,  so  that  it  might  seem  deeper  than  it  was. 
Tourgueneff  could  be  clear  and  deep,  for  he  saw  into 
nature  deeply,  and  without  trying  to  understand,  he 
understood.  And  in  this  he  differed  from  Balzac.  A 
mighty  brain  Balzac's,  but  we  are  conscious  that  the  brain 
is  in  labour;  and  very  often  it  spits  forth  lava  and  ashes. 
But  Tourgueneff's  art  is  unconscious  as  nature;  he  makes 
no  effort  to  understand  life.  Why  should  he?  for  he 
knew;  and  as  soon  as  we  know,  effort  ceases.  A  story 
that  any  other  writer  would  reject  as  commonplace,  he 
relates,  and  raises  it  in  his  relation  by  showing  the  eternal 
heart  beating  in  it.     To  be  original  without  being  ec- 


AVOWALS  133 

centric!  Ah!  there's  the  rub.  There  have  been  no 
other  tale-tellers  but  Balzac  and  Tourgueneff,  only  two 
out  of  the  myriad  have  been  able  to  write  tales  that  are 
read  by  succeeding  generations.  How  very  difficult  tale- 
telling  must  be,  for  there  have  been  many  poets,  many 
painters,  many  sculptors,  many  musicians,  but  there  have 
been,  I  repeat,  only  two  tale-tellers.  Tolstoy  writes 
with  a  mind  as  clear  as  an  electric  lamp,  a  sizzling  white 
light,  crude  and  disagreeable,  and  Flaubert's  writing  is 
as  beautiful  marquetry  or  was  thought  to  be  so  once. 
Be  this  as  it  may,  he  is  no  tale-teller;  his  best  books 
are  not  novels,  but  satires.  There  is  Huysmans  with 
En  Route,  and  the  Goncourts  have  written  some  inter- 
esting pages,  which  some  future  generation  may  glance 
at  curiously.  There  have  been  men  of  genius  who  wrote 
novels,  Dostoieffsky,  for  instance,  but  vapour  and  tumult 
do  not  make  tales,  and  before  we  can  admire  them  modern 
life  must  wring  all  the  Greek  out  of  us.  His  farrago  is 
wonderful,  but  I  am  not  won.  Maupassant  wrote  per- 
fect tales,  but  they  are  so  very  little. 

Only  a  verse  narrative  is  as  difficult  to  write  as  a  prose. 
There  is  but  one;  and  drama  is  difficult,  doubly  difficult 
when  it  is  in  verse;  and  it  may  be  argued  that  opera  is 
as  difficult  as  narrative,  for  no  one  has  written  many 
operas  successfully — none,  except  Wagner.  Mozart  is 
next  best.  But  what  concerns  us  now  is  Balzac  and 
Tourgueneff. 

I  have  compared  Balzac  to  many  things  at  different 
times,  I  can  see  him  now  as  some  great  conqueror 
— and  The  Human  Comedy  like  a  great  city  as  we  ap- 
proach it  extends  great  outlines  enclosing  the  horizon. 
We  are  attracted  by  its  extent,  and  by  the  vitality  which 
animates  its  every  part;  we  do  not,  it  is  true,  pause  any- 
where to  scan  some  perfect  temple  or  to  examine  a  carven 
portico.  But  what  matter?  we  say.  Does  not  life  come 
before  form?    Life,  we  say,  is  the  thing,  and  we  argue 


134  AVOWALS 

with  ourselves  and  ask  ourselves  if  it  is  not  life  that  we 
seek  in  our  friends  and  acquaintances,  in  books,  in  statues 
and  in  pictures;  if  this  be  so,  and  who  shall  say  it  is  not 
so,  then  Balzac  is  the  greatest.  He  narrates  the  orna- 
ments on  the  chimney-piece,  the  clock  and  the  candelabra, 
and  they  live  with  strange  intensity.  The  grey  sunshade 
in  Un  Lys  dans  la  VallSe  lives,  and  with  the  same  intensity 
as  a  sunshade  painted  by  Manet.  Twenty  years  ago  it 
was  opened  for  me.  There  is  life  in  Balzac's  hats  and 
neckties,  in  the  watch  he  drops  into  the  gentleman's  fob, 
in  the  rings  he  puts  on  the  lady's  fingers,  in  the  buckles 
he  stitches  on  her  shoe,  and  the  coat-of-arms  he  paints  on 
her  carriage.  Balzac  is  life  as  we  live  it,  a  writer  in  whom 
we  find  all  life;  and  he  seems  to  have  exhausted  daily  life, 
for  the  writers  that  have  succeeded  him  have  done  no 
more  than  to  lead  us  into  some  corner  of  his  genius. 
Sometimes  the  light  is  that  of  a  star,  sometimes  that  of 
a  lamp,  sometimes  that  of  a  taper,  but  there  is  always 
light,  and  the  light  reveals  things  great  or  small,  but 
there  is  always  revelation;  and  if  the  light  wanes  we 
know  it  may  well  burn  up  again  at  any  moment.  Mau- 
passant shows  us  human  nature  as  beetles.  He  lifts  a 
stone  and  the  beetles  run  away,  seeking  to  hide  them- 
selves. But  in  a  tale  by  Tourgueneff  we  are  with  life  as 
it  exists  in  our  own  hearts — sad,  unchanging,  mysterious. 
He  seems  to  have  brought  into  the  world  a  perfect  com- 
prehension of  life.  He  did  not  need  to  learn  life  from 
experience;  he  knew  it,  and  seems  to  have  always  been 
conscious  that  life  is  full  of  folly  and  evil;  that  morality 
is  a  myth,  an  academic  discussion;  and  that  the  artist 
can  only  teach  by  giving  the  world  images  of  beauty. 
He  was  passionately  interested  in  the  emancipation  of 
the  serfs,  but  he  only  advocated  their  emancipation  in- 
directly, and  in  The  Memoirs  of  a  Nihilist  he  never  tells 
the  acts  that  caused  the  man  to  be  condemned  to  solitary 
confinement;  to  describe  his  life  between  the  four  walls  of 


AVOWALS  135 

his  cell  was  enough  for  Tourgueneff.  As  I  have  said,  this 
great  man  seems  to  have  known  from  the  beginning  that 
life  as  we  see  it  is  but  an  unhappy  accident;  when  I  say 
life  as  we  see  it,  I  mean  the  surface  of  life;  for  few  look 
below  the  surface,  agitated  like  the  surface  of  the  sea, 
full  of  strange  and  cruel  life,  creatures  preying  on  each 
other;  but  below  the  surface,  in  our  instincts  there  is 
calm  immortality,  and  Tourgueneff  was  a  plunger  and 
could  read  the  shadowy  designs  that  he  discovered  among 
the  rocks. 

It  was  Renan  that  said,  and  said  beautifully,  that  a  tale 
by  Tourgueneff  is  the  most  beautiful  thing  that  art  has 
given  since  antiquity.  Balzac  is  more  astonishing,  more 
complete,  but  not  so  beautiful;  he  is  not  so  perfect;  and 
in  the  same  way  Tourgueneff,  though  not  so  astonishing 
or  so  complete  as  Balzac,  is  more  beautiful  and  more 
perfect. 

There  are  tales  that  Tourgueneff  calls  Dream  Tales, 
but  all  his  tales  were  dream  tales.  In  one  of  these  a 
man  wakes  in  the  middle  of  the  night  hearing  a  sound, 
the  sound  of  a  harp-string,  and  a  voice  tells  him  to  go 
next  evening  to  the  blasted  oak  by  the  edge  of  the  com- 
mon. He  goes,  and  meets  a  phantom,  and  the  phantom 
tells  him  not  to  be  afraid;  and  they  fly  over  the  world 
and  see  many  things.  It  seemed  to  me,  and  it  seems 
to  me  still,  that  in  this  tale  we  are  taken  to  the  verge 
of  life;  we  seem  to  look  over  the  very  edge;  we  feel  that 
the  great  secret  is  going  to  be  revealed  to  us.  In  The 
House  of  Gentlefolk  a  man  has  made  an  unfortunate 
marriage.  His  wife  has  lovers,  and  he  leaves  her;  years 
pass  and  he  hears  she  is  dead;  he  believes  her  to  be  dead, 
and  meeting  a  girl  who  loves  him  and  whom  he  loves,  it 
is  agreed  that  they  shall  marry.  But  the  wife  returns, 
and  the  girl  tells  the  man  that  he  must  go  back  to  his 
wife.  No  more  than  that,  and  it  would  be  hard  to  find  a 
subject  more  trite,  more  commonplace,  one  that  the  man 


136  AVOWALS 

of  talent  would  certainly  disdain;  yet  it  is  out  of  this 
trite  and  commonplace  material  that  genius  speaks  in 
telling  how  Lavretsky  comes  back  after  many  years  and 
finds  a  new  generation.  The  garden  is  changed;  trees 
have  grown,  and  the  young  people  want  to  play  hide-and- 
seek;  but  the  melancholy  man  intimidates  them,  and 
sitting  on  the  seat  where  he  sat  with  Liza,  he  begs  of 
them  to  go  to  play.  We  old  people,  he  says,  have  a 
resource  which  you  don't  know  yet,  and  which  is  better 
than  any  amusement — recollection. 

On  the  Eve  tells  the  same  tale.  The  young  girl  is  the 
same  age  as  Liza,  and  her  parents  are  thinking  of  her 
marriage.  Young  men  come  to  the  house — artists,  poli- 
ticians and  professors.  A  professor  speaks  to  her  about 
Goethe;  the  artist  laughs  at  him.  Helen  says:  Why 
not?  And  at  that  moment  we  begin  to  know  her.  That 
Why  not?  is  as  extraordinary  as  any  one  of  the  motives 
in  The  Ring.  An  hour  later  we  see  her  sitting  by  her 
window  facing  the  summer  night.  She  feels  something 
holy  half  rising  out  of,  half  falling  into,  her  heart,  and 
we  know  her  to  be  the  eternal  maiden — she  who  looked  at 
the  stars  ten  thousand  years  ago,  and  who  will  look  at 
them  ten  thousand  years  hence,  after  a  talk  with  a  pro- 
fessor of  literature;  but  her  fated  lover  is  a  Bulgarian,  the 
professor's  friend.  I  am  not  willing  to  tell  the  story  that 
Tourgueneff  tells,  and  love  it  well  enough  to  refrain.  So 
go  to  it,  reader,  and  find  in  it  the  joy  that  I  found  in  it. 
But  I  shall  not  look  into  it  again,  for  it  may  not  be  the 
book  that  I  love  but  my  memory  of  it.  Like  Lavretsky, 
I  indulge  in  recollections,  but  this  much  I  will  say,  that 
none  will  ever  tell  the  tale  of  love's  delight  as  well  again. 
Helen  holds  happiness  to  her  breast  amid  a  Venetian 
spring,  and  happiness  passes  from  her  as  the  season 
passes,  her  fate  affecting  us  as  no  personal  misfortune  can 
affect  us;  for  when  her  lover  dies  she  goes  we  know  not 
whither,  but  we  hear  her  cry  in  the  wilderness,  and  we 


AVOWALS  137 

see  her  lonely  as  Hagar  amid  the  rose  granite  rocks  of 
Arabia  under  a  lowering  sky. 

Tourgueneff  wrote  a  story  called  Spring  Floods.  In  it 
a  man  is  about  to  marry  a  beautiful  girl,  but  he  meets  the 
temptation  that  haunts  all  Tourgueneff's  stories  and 
wastes  his  life  following  her.  The  story  is  as  beautiful 
as  his  other  stories,  but  Tourgueneff  did  not  think  it 
sufficiently  perfect  in  outline  and  strove  to  perfect  the 
outlines  in  a  novel  called  Smoke,  losing  thereby  some  of 
the  fresh  colour  of  the  earlier  tale. 

The  beginning  of  Smoke  is,  however,  one  of  the  most 
memorable  things  in  Tourgueneff.  A  student  is  spending 
his  holidays  in  Baden-Baden,  and  a  Russian  countess  calls 
at  the  young  man's  hotel,  and  not  finding  him  in  she 
leaves  a  bouquet  of  heliotrope  for  him.  He  puts  the 
flowers  in  a  glass  of  water  and  sits  down  to  write  letters. 
But  the  suave,  subtle  odour  disturbs  him,  like  something 
half  remembered,  half  forgotten.  He  puts  the  glass  away, 
finishes  his  letters  and  goes  to  bed.  But  the  suave,  in- 
sinuating odour  follows  him  into  the  next  room  and  under 
the  bed-clothes. 

There  is  a  story  of  a  man  who  hears  a  woman  singing  in 
Sorrento.  He  is  in  the  street,  and  the  windows  of  a  house 
are  open,  and  a  beautiful  voice  singing  some  melody  of 
Schubert  or  Schumann  floats  out  into  the  night  air.  He 
hears  the  voice  again  on  the  steppes  in  Russia,  and  he 
meets  the  singer  afterwards  in  a  ballroom  in  Moscow.  I 
remember  no  other  fact.  I  only  remember  the  emotion, 
the  evocation  of  an  immortal  yearning  by  a  voice  heard 
in  the  streets  of  Sorrento,  heard  afterwards  on  the  steppes 
in  Russia.  There  is,  of  course,  some  mysterious  corres- 
pondence between  her  appearance  in  Sorrento  and  her 
reappearance  on  the  steppes.  The  mystery  of  these 
hauntings  is  implicit  in  their  mysterious  reoccurrence; 
the  same  temptation  occurring  again,  amid  other  circum- 
stances, leads  to  a  belief  in  an  eternal  return,  in  a  fate 


138  AVOWALS 

from  which  we  cannot  fly,  it  being  part  of  ourselves.  In 
ancient  Greece  and  Italy  men  met  it  in  the  woods;  they 
spied  a  glittering  breast  between  the  leaves  and  were  for 
ever  after  unable  to  love  mortal  woman.  They  knew  the 
malady  by  the  beautiful  word  nympholepsy.  The  ancient 
woods  are  now  empty  of  dryad  and  nymph,  but  the 
disease  is  with  us  still.  Nor  is  it  necessary  to  go  to  Sor- 
rento to  find  it:  many  a  man  has  found  it  amid  the  arti- 
ficial glades  of  painted  canvas.  A  nymph  flying  through 
the  limelight  has  inspired  as  deep  a  passion  as  a  nymph 
flying  through  the  reeds.  I  have  known  such  a  one. 
The  victim  sat  out  a  melodrama  a  hundred  times  for  her 
sake.  They  only  met  once  face  to  face,  and  then  only  for 
a  minute.  Her  marriage  and  her  death  might  have  in- 
spired Tourgueneff.  But  he  wrote  her  story!  I  remem- 
ber a  story  by  Tourgueneff,  of  a  little  clerk  who  went  to 
hear  an  actress  sing.  The  actress  wrote  to  him,  and  the 
pathos  in  Tourgueneff 's  story  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  little 
clerk  was  loved  when  he  thought  he  was  being  laughed 
at.  Tourgueneff  speaks  of  the  fish  that  swims  to  and 
fro  under  the  boat  apparently  at  liberty,  though  the  hook 
is  in  its  gills.  Ah,  he  knew  the  disease  in  its  several 
symptoms,  and  he  was  at  once  the  victim  and  the  perfect 
chronicler  of  the  disease. 

Whitman  spoke  of  Tourgueneff  as  the  noble  and 
melancholy  Tourgueneff,  and  no  words  could  describe 
him  better.  He  also  spoke  of  Tourgueneff  as  a  most 
wonderful  tale-teller,  and  the  choice  of  the  words  proves 
Whitman  to  have  been  an  artist  even  in  his  casual  talk. 
The  choice  of  the  word  proves  that  he  understood  Tour- 
gueneff as  well  as  I  understood  Corot,  and  when  I  wrote 
my  first  article  about  Tourgueneff  many  years  ago  I  said: 
These  tales  come  from  the  East;  he  told  tales,  and  we 
write  only  psychological  novels.  I  expressed  myself  bad- 
ly, for  I  then  only  had  an  inkling  of  the  beauty  I  have 


AVOWALS  139 

learnt,  and  that  I  am  still  learning  to  comprehend — a  tale 
by  Tourgueneff  and  a  landscape  by  Corot. 

Balzac  and  Wagner  have  exalted  me;  I  have  joined  in 
the  processional  crowds,  and  have  carried  a  blowing 
banner.  My  life  would  have  been  poor  without  them, 
but  neither  has  been  as  much  to  me  as  Tourgueneff  and 
Corot.  They  have  been  and  still  are  the  holy  places 
where  I  rested  and  rest;  together  they  have  revealed  to 
me  all  that  I  needed  to  know.  For  all  things  are  con- 
tained in  them.  He  who  has  seen  Corot  has  seen  all  the 
universe,  for  could  we  find  in  the  farthest  star  anything 
more  beautiful  than  evanescent  cloud  and  a  nymph 
gathering  summer  blooms  by  the  edge  of  a  lake?  A 
cloud  floats  and  goes  out,  and  the  blossoming  wood  is 
reflected  in  the  lake;  and  lo!  he  has  told  us  the  tale  of  a 
spring  morning.  All  the  outward  externalities  of  nature 
which  Rousseau  sought  vainly  to  render,  Corot  knew  how 
to  put  aside.  He  knew  that  they  were  but  passing  things, 
just  as  Tourgueneff  knew  that  all  the  trivial  disputes  of 
the  day  are  not  worthy  to  make  art,  and  these  twin  souls, 
the  most  beautiful  ever  born  of  woman,  lived  in  the  depths 
where  all  is  still  and  quiet;  where  the  larch  bends,  and 
the  lake  mirrors  a  pellucid  sky;  where  a  man  longs  for  a 
woman  that  has  been  taken  from  him;  where  a  woman 
holds  her  desire  to  her  breast  for  a  moment,  loses  it,  and 
is  heard  of  in  Bulgaria  as  a  nurse,  or  is  heard  of  as  a 
Sister  of  Charity,  but  about  whom  nothing  certain  is 
known. 

That  Tourgueneff  loved  Corot,  I  think;  and  Monet 
loves  Corot,  for  he  told  me;  he  loves  too,  Balzac,  and 
they  are  alike  in  this:  neither  had  a  point  of  view;  and 
perhaps  this  was  why  Corot  did  not  like  Monet  any 
better  than  Tourgueneff  liked  Balzac. 


140  AVOWALS 


CHAPTER  5. 


ONE  morning,  while  thinking  of  Tourgueneff,  my 
thoughts  were  interrupted  by  the  galloping  of  a 
horse.  A  runaway,  I  cried;  and,  for  no  traceable  reason, 
fell  to  wondering  if  the  cab  were  bringing  me  a  Russian 
visitor.  Sir,  a  gentleman  wishes  to  see  you.  What  is  his 
name?  I  can't  pronounce  it,  sir;  it's  a  foreign  name; 
but  it  ends  in  off.  And  while  my  visitor  was  taking  off 
his  hat  and  coat  in  the  ante-room  I  waited,  asking  myself 
who  this  friend  of  Tourgueneff's  might  be.  I'm  afraid 
my  servant's  pronunciation  of  Russian  names  is  defec- 
tive;  I  did  not  catch He  mentioned  his  name,  and 

I  knew  him  to  be  one  of  Tolstoy's  critics,  and  one  of 
Tourgueneff's  translators.  I've  come,  he  said,  to  ask  if 
you  will  give  me  an  interview,  and  if  you  will  tell  me 

what  you  think  of Tourgueneff?   I  interrupted.   No; 

to  ask  you  to  tell  me  what  you  think  of  Tolstoy's  latest 
declaration  regarding  art  and  the  objects  of  art,  he  re- 
plied. Would  your  purpose  not  be  equally  well  suited 
if  I  were  to  tell  you  what  I  thought  of  Tourgueneff's 
article  on  Don  Quixote  and  Hamlet?  All  you  say  would 
be  interesting,  no  doubt,  he  answered,  on  that  or  any 
other  subject,  but  you  see  I  am  collecting  the  opinions 
of  writers,  painters  and  musicians  regarding  Tolstoy's 
latest  declarations.  You  have  read  the  book,  What  is 
Art? 

Of  the  book  I  knew  nothing  but  the  name,  but  I  con- 
tinued to  talk  about  Tolstoy,  hoping  all  the  while  that  the 
conversation  would  turn  on  Tourgueneff.  For  it  could 
not  be  else.  Of  this  I  felt  sure,  that  my  visitor,  having 
known  Tourgueneff,  could  doubtless  tell  me  about  the 
packet  of  love  letters  that  had  been  discovered  lately — 
love  letters  addressed  to  Madame  Viardot.     But  it  was 


AVOWALS  141 

hard  to  lead  him  away  from  Tolstoy.  He  began  again 
and  again: 

Tolstoy's  argument  is,  that  if  a  man  infects  another 
with  a  feeling  that  he  has  experienced,  he  has  produced  a 
work  of  art.  And  he  concludes,  no  doubt,  I  chimed  in, 
that  the  best  art  is  the  art  that  communicates  the  best 
ideas,  the  best  ideas  being,  of  course,  Tolstoy's  ideas. 
My  visitor  protested,  but  I  would  not  hear  any  further 
explanation.  If  you'll  allow  me,  I'd  prefer  to  speak  of 
Tolstoy's  novels.  Do  you  admire  them?  he  asked,  and 
on  my  telling  him  that  I  did,  he  begged  me  to  tell  him 
why  I  admired  Tolstoy's  novels,  and  within  three  minutes 
my  conversation  was  indistinguishable  from  what  one 
reads  in  the  newspapers.  I'm  afraid  you've  heard  all  I'm 
saying  before?  And  his  manner  signified  that  he  had. 
I  daresay  you  have,  I  continued,  for  I'm  not  saying  what 

I  really  think.     I  admire  Tolstoy;  but  if  I  only  dared 

I  beg  of  you,  he  interrupted.  Well,  I  continued,  Gautier 
used  to  boast  that  the  invisible  world  was  visible  to  him, 
but  to  no  one  was  it  ever  so  visible  as  it  is  to  Tolstoy. 
His  eyesight  exceeds  all  eyesight  before  or  since.  At  this 
point  I  paused,  and  my  visitor  and  I  sat  looking  at  each 
other,  myself  very  much  abashed.  Pray  go  on,  said  he; 
for  I  am  wondering  if  your  conclusion  will  be  the  same 
as  Tourgueneff 's.  He  once  spoke  to  me  in  much  the 
same  way.  Now  you  frighten  me,  and  I  can  say  no  more 
until  you  tell  me  what  Tourgueneff  said.  I  will  not  tell 
you  what  Tourgueneff  said  until  you  conclude.  What  is 
your  conclusion?  That  Tolstoy  is  not  a  great  psycholo- 
gist, I  answered  tremblingly,  for  when  he  comes  to  speak 
of  the  soul  he  is  no  longer  certain;  he  doesn't  know. 
But  I'm  saying  something  that  no  one  will  agree  with, 
that  no  one  has  ever  said.  You're  repeating  what  Tour- 
gueneff said  to  me,  said  my  visitor.  He  used  nearly  the 
same  words  in  speaking  of  Tolstoy  *  Is  that  so?  Is  that 
really  so?     You've  no  idea  what  a  pleasure  it  is  to  me  to 


142  AVOWALS 

hear  that  on  the  subject  of  Tolstoy's  genius  Tourgueneff 
and  I — would  you  mind  repeating  what  you  have  just 

said?     Is  it  really  true  that ? 

He  assured  me  that  it  was  really  true,  and  in  the  course 
of  conversation  the  interviewer  told  me  about  the  love 
letters  and  the  suppressions  that  were  made  in  them,  that 
a  passage  was  deleted  in  which  Tourgueneff  expresssed  a 
wish  he  were  the  carpet  under  her  feet,  for  Madame 
Viardot  feared  that  it  might  lead  readers  to  think  she  had 
been  Tourgueneff 's  mistress.  But  of  course  she  was,  and 
to  her  very  great  honour,  I  cried.  Why  else  should  we  be 
talking  about  her?  Tell  me  more,  my  visitor,  and  my 
visitor  told  me  he  had  made  all  the  suppressions  she  asked, 
but  had  deposited  the  complete  manuscript  in  La  Biblio- 
theque  Nationale.  I  only  obtained  her  consent  to  the 
publication  by  assuring  her  that  if  she  did  not  give  it  the 
story  of  her  friendship  with  Tourgueneff  would  be  lost 
for  ever — her  grandchildren  would  certainly  oppose  the 
publication.  She  wished  for  the  honour  of  his  bed,  but 
would  like  the  i's  to  remain  undotted.  Just  so,  my  visitor 
answered,  and  the  conflict  in  her  mind  was  plain  in  her 
face.  I  could  have  gone  on  talking  for  hours  about  her, 
but  my  interviewer  pressed  me  for  information  regarding 
Tolstoy's  popularity  in  England,  and  it  seemed  shameful 
that  my  part  of  the  conversation  should  be  limited  to 
such  matters  as  that  it  was  the  late  Mr  Vizetelly  who  had 
introduced  Tolstoy  to  the  English  public,  and  that  the 
translation  he  had  issued  was  a  revised  version  of  an 
American  translation.  We  talked  of  the  difficulties  of  the 
translation,  and  I  learnt  that  Tourgueneff  had  always  been 
fortunate  in  the  matter  of  translation.  His  Liza  had  been 
excellently  well  done  into  English  by  Mr  R.  S.  Ralston, 
and  from  a  copy  that  Tourgueneff  had  specially  revised 
for  the  purpose,  and  then,  catching  enthusiasm  from  the 
theme,  I  told  him  that  it  was  not  the  poverty  of  the 
translation  that  stood  between  Tourgueneff  and  popular 


AVOWALS  143 

appreciation  in  England  but  the  noble  simplicity  of  his 
stories.  However  deep  the  water  may  be,  I  said,  the 
public  cries:  It  is  but  a  shallow  if  the  water  be  clear. 
We  must  stir  up  the  mud  to  deceive  the  public.  I  told 
him  that  Mr  Vizetelly  also  published  Crime  and  Punish- 
ment, and  we  fell  to  criticising  the  critics.  The  critics 
were  awed  by  the  length  of  the  Russian  novel.  Crime 
and  Punishment  is  no  longer  than  any  modern  English 
novel,  and  War  and  Peace  is  the  longest  novel  ever  written 
if  we  except  Les  Miserables.  But  the  larger  part  of  Les 
MisSrables  is  history.  True  that  there  is  some  history  in 
War  and  Peace,  but  Napoleon's  battles  are  not  so  plainly 
extraneous,  so  independent  of  the  characters  in  the  novel, 
as  Victor  Hugo's  rhetorical  descriptions  of  Waterloo. 

The  conversation  paused,  and,  fearing  that  my  visitor 
would  leave  me,  I  began  to  argue  that  Tolstoy's  realism 
and  ethics  were  the  cause  of  his  popularity.  A  popular 
novel  is  a  compound  of  amusement  and  admonition,  and 
the  most  popular  are  those  in  which  clowning  is  sand- 
wiched with  preaching;  a  sudden  somersault  or  a  crude 
exhortation  will  draw  a  crowd.  But  few  care  to  listen 
to  the  poet.  Verlaine  and  Tourgueneff  only  gathered 
few  disciples  during  the  term  of  their  natural  lives,  but 
henceforth  they  will  find  disciples  in  every  generation; 
in  a  hundred  years  many  more  will  have  listened  to  them 
than  ever  listened  to  the  clown  or  the  preacher.  In 
time  the  greater  writer  is  read  by  the  greater  number. 
Beautiful  rhythms  acquire  more  subtle  enchantments  as 
the  years  go  by,  whereas  the  coarser  rhythms  of  the 
preacher  and  clown  interest  only  a  single  generation — 
not  always  even  so  long;  the  preacher  and  the  clown 
often  live  to  see  their  followers  leave  them,  attracted  by 
new  doctrines  and  new  somersaults.  So  did  I  talk.  In 
the  presence  of  an  interviewer  we  remember  all  our  aphor- 
isms and  serve  them  up  again  to  convince  him  of  our  great 
wit  and  wisdom;    and  an  answer  I  once  made  the  late 


144  AVOWALS 

Mr  Henley  was  brought  in  cleverly  as  a  sort  of  Parthian 
shaft.  Mr  Henley  has  once  said  to  me:  Tolstoy  could 
wear  Tourgueneff  on  his  watch-chain,  and  I  answered: 
The  trinket  on  the  watch-chain  is  often  more  valuable 
than  the  chain.  But  my  visitor  was  not  brought  to  bay 
as  I  expected  he  would  be,  and  I  allowed  him  to  leave, 
promising,  however,  to  meet  him  in  Paris.  Meanwhile  I 
would  read  What  is  Art?  He  would  not  be  sending  his 
copy  to  the  printer  before  the  end  of  the  month,  etc.,  etc.; 
and  immediately  after  I  heard  the  sound  of  galloping 
hooves  and  began  to  think  that  perhaps  my  visitor  had 
come  in  a  droshky;  and  so  real  was  the  belief  that  I  did 
not  dare  to  look  out  of  the  window  lest  I  should  be  dis- 
appointed. 

The  fire  was  burning  brightly,  and  there  were  many 
things  to  think  about:  the  delicious  flattery  that  my 
thoughts  had  once  moved  along  the  same  plane  as  Tour- 
gueneff's,  the  love  letters,  and  then  Tolstoy  himself,  who, 
after  all,  was  worth  while  thinking  about.  And  now  or 
never  was  the  time  to  come  to  say  real,  vital  things  about 
Tolstoy,  things  worthy  of  myself,  things  surpassing  any- 
thing Henley  could  have  said,  and  so  I  fell  to  thinking, 
saying  to  myself:  in  the  nineties  we  were  all  cowed  by 
the  spell  of  realism,  external  realism,  myself  less  than 
Henley  for  there  had  always  been  misgivings,  even  Tour- 
gueneff's  praise  of  Tolstoy  failing  to  convince  me.  And 
I  pondered  that,  however  deep  the  spell  he  casts  upon  us, 
the  sensation  he  communicates  is  a  harsh  one,  even  ugly. 
His  breath  is  a  blast  from  the  north,  but  Tourgueneff 
breathes  like  the  south  wind  always;  even  on  his  death- 
bed he  could  write  to  Tolstoy: 

Dearest  Lyof  Nikolaievitch, — It  is  long  since  I 
wrote  to  you.  I  have  been  in  bed,  and  it  is  my  death- 
bed. I  cannot  get  well;  that  is  no  longer  to  be  thought 
of.     I  write  to  you  expressly  to  assure  you  how  happy  I 


AVOWALS  145 

have  been  to  be  your  contemporary,  and  to  present  to 
you  a  last,  a  most  urgent  request.  Dear  friend,  come 
back  to  literary  work!  This  gift  came  to  you  whence  all 
gifts  come  to  us.  Ah!  how  happy  should  I  be  if  I  could 
think  that  you  would  listen  to  my  request.  My  friend, 
great  writer  of  our  land  of  Russia,  grant  me  this  request. 

The  letter  is  extraordinary — even  in  this  somewhat 
frigid,  somewhat  partial  translation — the  French  trans- 
lation contains  more  lines  than  this  one,  but  I  cannot  lay 
hands  on  it  at  this  moment,  but  I  remember  that  Tour- 
gueneff  says,  in  a  last  sentence,  that  he  can  write  no 
more.  The  letter  was  unfinished,  but  it  betrayed,  it  is 
true,  a  hope  that  in  health  he  would  not  have  indulged 
in,  that  Tolstoy  might  change  his  destiny,  which,  not- 
withstanding many  marvellous  gifts,  was  clearly  set  in 
the  direction  of  morals  and  doctrinal  inquiry.  For  know- 
ing human  life  to  be  a  sordid  story,  he  knocked  at  a 
Jewish  door;  or  shall  I  say,  at  a  Syrian  Greek  door, 
whereas  Tourgueneff's  more  sensuous  temperament  al- 
lowed him  to  see  life  beautiful :  and  whosoever  would  do 
this  must  stint  himself  of  everything  but  exhibition,  for 
though  the  artist  may  teach,  it  must  be  indirectly;  with 
beautiful  images  and  ideas  he  may  draw  men's  minds 
from  baser  things.  Man  is  made  of  many  needs,  I  mur- 
mured to  myself,  and  one  of  these  is  beauty,  as  I  bent 
over  the  fire.  But  Tolstoy  looks  upon  art  as  a  means 
whereby  we  communicate  our  ideas.  My  visitor  admitted 
that  Tolstoy  repudiate  beauty.  But  it  is  impossible  to 
write  the  simplest  sentence  without  some  rudimentary 
sense  of  rhythm?  Rhythm  is  beauty.  His  ugly  tempera- 
ment intervenes  between  him  and  his  intelligence.  That 
is  it,  I  said,  throwing  myself  back  in  my  arm-chair  in  my 
low-ceilinged  room  so  that  I  might  meditate  better.  The 
beauty,  I  said,  that  I  recognise  in  War  and  Peace  is  the 
vast  architecture,  the  number  of  characters  all  going  hither 


146  AVOWALS 

and  thither,  each  on  an  errand  big  or  little,  the  multi- 
plicity of  events,  all  perfectly  controlled  by  one  central 
purpose.  War  and  Peace  may  be  compared  to  the  can- 
vases of  Tintoretto  and  Veronese,  I  muttered,  and  a  mo- 
ment after,  the  accidental  phrase — his  temperament  is  an 
ugly  one — led  me  to  consider  War  and  Peace  from  a  dif- 
ferent point  of  view,  and  I  said  to  myself :  No  comparison 
between  Tolstoy  and  the  great  pagans  of  the  sixteenth 
century  is  valid,  for  their  temperaments  were  not  as  ugly 
as  their  palettes  tell  us,  but  if  we  forget  the  design  of 
War  and  Peace,  and  consider  Tolstoy's  palette,  we  find 
upon  it  very  little  else  but  black  and  white.  It  is  true 
that  Rembrandt's  portrait  of  his  wife,  the  one  that  hangs 
in  the  Louvre,  is  but  bitumen  and  white  faintly  tinted 
with  bitumen,  a  little  rose  madder  showing  in  the  cheeks? 
But  no  comparison  between  Rembrandt's  palette  and 
Tolstoy's  is  possible.  There  is  nothing  on  the  Russian's 
but  a  thin  grey,  and  it  might  be  truer  to  compare  his 
designs  to  Kaulbach's  than  to  Tintoretto's.  But  to  be 
just  we  will  admit  without  equivocation  that  his  drawing 
is  far  in  advance  of  Kaulbach's;  it  is  that,  but,  all  the 
same,  it  lacks  what  is  known  in  the  studios  as  quality; 
the  quality  of  the  original  should  transpire  in  the  trans- 
lation to  some  extent,  and  if  we  have  to  think  of  him  as 
a  painter  I  must  think  of  him  as  a  designer  of  vast  car- 
toons moral  as  Kaulback's,  with,  say,  here  and  there  such 
a  well-observed  piece  of  drawing  as  we  meet  with  in  Sir 
John  Millais  in  his  Pre-Raphaelite  days?  In  these  early 
days  Millais  was  always  beautiful.     I  am  afraid  these 

comparisons  are  not  very  happy,  and  yet 

However,  the  first  two  volumes  are  filled  with  pictures 
— that  is  to  say,  scenes  taken  from  life,  if  I  may  be  per- 
mitted to  use  an  expressive  colloquialism;  and  in  reading 
them  the  reader  must  be  a  very  casual  reader  indeed  if 
he  does  not  ask  himself  if  it  was  Tolstoy's  intention  to 
transcribe  the  whole  of  life.     His  intention  seems  cer- 


AVOWALS  147 

tainly  to  have  been  to  include  all  the  different  scenes  that 
come  to  pass  in  civilised  life,  and  no  doubt  he  ran  them 
over  in  his  mind:  a  scene  of  ladies  in  a  drawing-room, 
taking  tea,  is  followed  by  a  scene  in  a  ballroom  with  ladies 
dancing,  and  this  is  followed  by  a  scene  in  a  barrack-room 
with  a  quarrel  among  the  officers.  The  first  volume  of 
War  and  Peace  reminds  one  of  a  picture  gallery  of  second- 
rate  Dutch  pictures,  for  there  are  sledging,  skating  and 
hunting  scenes,  and  every  scene  is  described  by  an  eye 
that  sees  clearly,  and  after  some  twenty  or  thirty  scenes 
executed  in  the  dry  and  angular  manner  of  Meissonier  we 
begin  to  weary  and  to  long  for  chapters  in  which  there 
are  no  pictures,  for  beauty,  for  charm,  for  meditation. 
We  turn  the  pages;  but  alas,  there  are  more  pictures,  and 
curiosity  taking  the  place  of  sensible  pleasure,  we  ask 
ourself  if  Tolstoy  has  omitted  some  description  of  a  yacht 
race,  for  instance. 

The  book  is  long,  but  even  if  it  were  twice  as  long,  if 
it  were  three  times  as  long,  there  would  always  be  scenes 
that  have  been  omitted,  and  these  Tolstoy,  waking  up 
in  the  middle  of  the  night,  must  have  regretted.  There 
must  have  been  a  night  in  which  it  occurred  to  him  that 
he  had  not  included  a  yacht  race,  and  another  night  when 
he  awoke,  screaming:  I  forgot  high  Mass,  and  sinking 
back  on  his  pillow  he  tried  to  find  consolation  in  the 
thought  that  he  had  described  many  religious  ceremonies, 
with  the  same  minuteness  as  a  traveller  would  the  religious 
rites  of  a  newly  discovered  people.  No  writer  ever  tried 
harder  to  compete  with  Nature  than  Tolstoy.  Yet  he 
was  a  clever  man,  and  must  have  known  that  he  would 
be  beaten  in  the  end;  but  he  is  one  of  those  men  to  whom 
everything  is  plain  and  explicit  except  the  obvious,  and 
War  and  Peace  is  so  plainly  the  work  of  a  man  with  a  bee 
in  his  bonnet  that,  despite  the  talent  manifested  in  every 
description,  we  cannot  help  comparing  him  to  a  swimmer 
in  a  canal  challenging  a  train  going  by  to  a  race.     The 


148  AVOWALS 

reader  is  at  first  interested  and  then  amused,  but  before 
the  end  of  the  second  volume  he  wearies  of  the  absurd 
competition  and  lays  down  the  book,  and  will  never  take 
it  up  again  unless  mayhap  somebody  tells  him  the  scene 
in  which  Prince  Andrei  lies  wounded  on  the  battle-field, 
looking  at  the  stars.  That  is  how  it  came  to  pass  that  I 
picked  up  the  book,  and  while  seeking  out  the  scene  of 
Prince  Andrei's  death  I  read  the  whole  of  the  battle  of 
Borodino,  marvelling  greatly  at  the  ceaseless  invention 
with  which  Tolstoy  takes  Pierre  from  one  regiment  to 
another,  from  tent  to  tent,  showing  us  what  is  happening 
at  every  part  of  the  immense  battle,  explaining  the  differ- 
ent plans  of  the  Russian  generals.  Now  the  battle  of 
Borodino  is  as  interesting  as  a  newspaper,  as  casual 
life  is,  but  Prince  Andrei's  death  is  eternal  life,  and  we 
do  not  come  upon  life  again  in  any  eternal  aspect  until 
Pierre  is  taken  prisoner  and  forced  to  follow  the  French 
army  from  Moscow.  He  meets  a  peasant  philosopher 
on  the  way  who  has  a  little  pink  puppy  (the  puppy  gen- 
erally runs  on  three  legs),  and  it  is  during  the  retreat 
from  Moscow  that  we  begin  to  understand  that  the  hero 
of  the  book  is  Destiny.  For  everyone  in  the  book  set 
out  to  do  something,  and  everybody  does  something,  but 
no  one  does  what  he  set  out  to  do;  and  we  marvelled 
greatly  how  Tolstoy  could  have  described  all  the  things 
he  described  in  the  first  volume  without  once  communi- 
cating the  idea  that  must  have  been  at  the  back  of  his 
mind.  He  gathers  up  his  threads  in  the  fourth  volume 
very  neatly:  Natasha  abandons  her  sensuous,  frivolous 
girlhood,  and  becomes  extraordinarily  interested  in  her 
babies,  even  in  their  disgusting  little  ailments;  we  assist 
at  the  sinking  into  old  age  of  the  generation  we  knew  in 
middle  age  in  the  first  volume;  we  catch  sight  of  the 
young  people  whom  we  knew  in  the  first  volume  sinking 
into  middle  age,  and  though  some  years  have  gone  by 
since  I  read  the  book,  I  still  remember  Natasha's  brother 


AVOWALS  149 

standing  on  the  balcony  watching  the  small  rain  that  the 
thirsting  oats  are  drinking  up  greedily,  thinking  that  he 
must  be,  after  all,  no  more  than  a  commonplace  man  who 
married  an  ugly  princess. 

Pierre  too  has  lost  some  of  his  illusions,  but  not  all:  he 
still  goes  up  to  St  Petersburg  to  attend  spiritualistic 
s  ances,  but  now  he  is  only  faintly  interested  in  spiritual 
things,  and  for  this  knowledge  of  himself  and  that  life 
will  know  no  further  change  for  him,  we  must  look  upon 
Pierre  as  Tolstoy's  one  creation,  if  he  be  a  creation.  But 
what  do  we  mean  by  a  creation?  Let  the  word  pass; 
for  what  we  have  to  decide  is  if  Pierre  be  an  entity  in  the 
sense  that  Bazaroff,  or  Insarov,  or  the  would-be  Nihilist 
in  Virgin  Soil  are  entities ;  if  his  foolish  humanity  can  be 
compared  with  Bazaroff's  pessimism;  and  if  Natasha's 
interest  in  her  children's  ailments  express  life  as  intensely 
as  Rudin's  in  the  story  that  bears  his  name,  or  Helen's 
courage  in  On  the  Eve. 

When  we  see  the  volumes  of  War  and  Peace  on  the 
table,  they  seem  to  us  as  long  as  life  itself,  and  we  go  on 
reading  them  as  we  go  on  living,  and  we  remember  them 
only  as  little,  notwithstanding  the  time  we  spent  reading 
them.  As  soon  as  we  lay  the  books  aside  Tolstoy's  char- 
acters begin  to  recede,  and  distance  reveals  the  barren- 
ness of  the  ways  that  we  walked  in,  and  the  very  con- 
trary seems  to  me  to  be  true  about  Tourgueneff.  It  is 
true  that  the  very  size  of  his  books  prevents  us  from  be- 
lieving them  to  be  great  books;  they  seem  merely  pretty 
stories,  somewhat  slight,  and  it  is  not  until  long  after- 
wards that  their  beauty  appears,  distance  lifting  Liza, 
Lavretsky  and  Helen  out  of  the  circumstances  in  which 
Tourgueneff  places  them.  It  is  not  for  many  years  after 
that  we  begin  to  recognise  them  as  typical  of  all  that  the 
heart  ponders  and  remembers;  the  difference  between  the 
men  is  immense.  Tolstoy  is  lord  over  what  is  actual  and 
passing;   he  can  tell  better  than  anybody  how  the  snipe 


150  AVOWALS 

rise  out  of  the  marsh,  and  the  feelings  of  a  young  man  as 
he  looks  at  a  young  girl  and  desires  her,  but  his  mind 
rarely  reaches  a  clear  conception  of  a  human  soul  as  a 
distinct  entity;  his  knowledge  of  the  soul,  except  in  the 
case  of  Pierre,  is  relative  and  episodic.  And  the  house  he 
built  reminds  one  somewhat  of  a  palatial  hotel  where 
everything  is  supplied  except  beauty.  All  kinds  of  differ- 
ent people  are  met  with  in  the  passages.  There  is  a  cen- 
tral hall  with  dinner-parties  going  up  the  staircase;  the 
building  is  lit  with  electric  light;  there  are  bands  and 
winter  gardens.  Tolstoy's  book  is  terribly  nineteenth 
century,  but  Tourgueneff's  House  of  Gentlefolk  is  much 
older;  as  soon  as  it  comes  into  view  we  feel  that  it  is  part 
of  the  landscape,  so  long  has  it  stood  there.  It  seems  as 
if  it  had  always  been  inhabited  by  the  same  people;  gen- 
erations of  the  same  family  must  have  lived  in  it,  and  these 
have  given  the  house  its  character.  It  contains  but  a 
dozen  or  fifteen  rooms,  twenty  at  most,  but  every  room 
bears  the  trace  of  him  or  her  who  lived  in  it.  A  water- 
colour  drawing  of  an  old-time  mill  tells  the  story  of  some- 
body gone;  a  collection  of  shells  tells  another  story;  the 
furniture  was  not  all  brought  together  at  one  time;  the 
house  breathes  the  story  of  the  four  or  five  people  who 
sit  in  its  rooms  and  walk  in  its  garden.  There  is  no 
sense  of  home  in  Tolstoy:  he  is  mainly  engaged  in  tell- 
ing the  stories  of  the  visitors  who  go  up  and  down  the 
staircase  and  gather  to  hear  the  band  in  the  winter  gar- 
dens. The  country  house  has  its  own  story;  the  hotel 
furnishes  no  commanding  story,  only  episodes. 

Helen,  in  On  the  Eve,  goes  out  to  life  with  both  hands 
open  to  grasp  it ;  but  what  she  grasps  are  the  hands  of  a 
consumptive  man.  I  do  not  know,  and  no  one  will  ever 
know,  if  Tourgueneff  intended  to  contrast  Liza,  who 
shrinks  from  life,  daring  hardly  a  glance,  with  Helen, 
who  grasps  life  so  eagerly  and  passionately  that  life  ex- 
tinguishes in  her  grasp.     A  writer  is  not  conscious  of  the 


AVOWALS  151 

whole  of  his  idea,  some  part  of  it  exists  only  in  his  sub- 
consciousness ;  but  Tourgueneff  was  a  subtle  thinker,  and 
though  the  idea  is  only  indicated,  and  will  not  be  per- 
ceived by  the  casual  reader,  yet  it  is  difficult  to  feel  sure 
he  was  not  aware  of  it.  If  he  were  not  aware  of  it, 
Insarov  was  consumptive  merely  because  Tourgueneff 
wished  a  tragic  end  to  his  love  story — an  unpinning  of 
plot  that  few  will  deem  consistent  with  Tourgueneff's 
genius;  and  if  the  alternative  be  accepted,  it  will  be  al- 
lowed that  no  writer  has  woven  so  delicate  a  thread  into 
his  woof  of  story,  not  since  the  Greeks  certainly.  And 
our  thoughts  striking  at  random  we  are  tempted  to  think 
that  On  the  Eve  is  a  last  effort  of  Greek  genius  risen  after 
centuries  in  the  Crimea.  Did  not  whisper  once  reach  me 
that  Tourgueneff  came  from  the  Crimea,  once  a  Greek 
colony? 


CHAPTER  6. 

IT  has  been  admitted,  it  is  true  with  some  reservations, 
that  War  and  Peace  reminds  us  of  the  great  canvases 
of  Tintoretto  and  Veronese,  but  let  it  not  be  forgotten 
that  the  minds  of  the  great  Venetian  artists  were  un- 
burdened with  any  idea  but  beauty,  and  that  we  followed 
Napoleon's  army  from  Moscow  to  the  frontiers  of  Russia, 
learning  the  great  plains  of  Russia  as  from  a  map,  a 
wonderful  vision,  or,  shall  we  say,  a  seeing  but  with  no 
story  in  it,  for  no  one  has  suffered  in  his  heart  and  no  one 
has  dreamed,  which  brings  us  to  an  important  point,  that 
Tolstoy  was  not  a  natural  tale-teller.  He  might  have 
been,  or  anything  else  in  literature  had  he  chosen,  so 
extraordinary  were  his  gifts.  But  his  object  was  to  rid 
himself  of  all  sense  of  beauty,  to  crush  it  out  of  his  heart; 
his  whole  life  was  a  long  preaching  against  beauty ;  beauty 
was  the  original  sin  and  he  hated  it  with  the  hatred  of 


152  AVOWALS 

the  ancient  Jew.  He  reviled  it,  he  spurned  it,  he  spat 
upon  it.  He  cried  from  the  steppes:  let  it  be  burned 
up  like  stubble.  A  veritable  Jeremiah  of  the  steppes 
whose  hatred  of  beauty  can  only  be  explained  by  the 
supposition  of  some  recrudescence  of  the  Jew  in  him. 
A  mere  fancy  this  suggestion  is,  but  no  better  proof  of 
any  sort  can  I  put  forward  in  support  of  it  but  his  art. 
Art,  like  the  microscope,  reveals  many  things  that  the 
naked  eye  does  not  see,  and  Tolstoy's  art  is  as  cosmo- 
politan as  the  art  of  the  modern  Jew.  If  we  consider 
it  we  notice  at  once  that  it  lacks  original  form,  recalling 
in  many  ways  English  and  French  fiction.  The  com- 
position of  Anna  Karena  seems  to  be  derived  from  the 
English  novel,  and  its  realism  suggests  a  French  source; 
just  as  we  have  a  family  divided  into  four  parts  in  Vanity 
Fair,  we  have  a  family  divided  into  four  parts  in  Anna 
Karena,  and  the  different  threads  are  picked  up  in  the 
fourth  volume  in  much  the  same  way,  and  the  descriptive 
writing  in  this  novel  and  in  the  novel  that  preceded  it, 
War  and  Peace,  recalls  the  realism  of  Flaubert.  Madame 
Bovary  was  published  in  '57.  War  and  Peace  was  pub- 
lished in  '60.  Most  of  it  must  have  been  writtenin  '57,  which 
destroys  any  theory  that  can  be  put  forward  of  Tolstoy's 
indebtedness  to  the  Frenchman.  All  the  same  there  is 
much  that  recalls  Flaubert,  and  though  we  prefer  Tolstoy's 
writings  to  Flaubert,  it  would  seem  to  us,  if  we  do  not 
know  the  dates,  that  Tolstoy  had  gotten  a  hint  from 
Flaubert.  But  to  set  aside  the  possibility  of  this  we  must 
perforce  fall  back  upon  Balzac  as  having  suggested  the 
realism  of  both  Tolstoy  and  Flaubert,  a  suggestion  that 
does  not  seem  to  me  very  valid,  but  I  cannot  put  forward 
anything  better  to-day,  and  am  perplexed  by  the  numer- 
ous and  implicated  sources  of  Tolstoy's  art.  The  nearest 
thing  to  truth  that  can  be  said  about  it  is  that  it  arose  in 
the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  in  Western  Europe, 
and  represents  in  art  the  scientific  ideas  of  Taine,  Herbert 


AVOWALS  153 

Spencer  and  Darwin.  With  this  difference,  however,  that 
Tolstoy  was  unwilling  to  believe  that  when  he  wrote  War 
and  Peace  man's  origin  was  merely  the  survival  of  the 
fittest.  He  was,  however,  impressed  by  the  notion  that 
if  you  would  understand  the  insect,  you  must  understand 
the  leaf  upon  which  the  insect  lives.  It  was  out  of  such 
scientific  beliefs  that  the  elaborate  descriptions  of  Madame 
B  ovary  arose,  and  it  is  hard  for  me  to  believe  that  they 
were  not  shared  by  Tolstoy,  for  how  else  can  we  account 
for  the  fact  that  his  realism  so  often  reminds  us  of  a  lady 
dressed  in  the  French  fashion  for  1870  going  out  for  a 
walk  on  the  steppes.  We  can,  however,  regard  War  and 
Peace  with  kinder  eyes,  discovering  in  it  the  realism  of 
children — the  realism  of  the  early  Italian  painters  who 
stop  at  the  wayside  to  tease  a  beetle,  to  investigate  a 
bush.  We  may  do  this,  for  it  would  not  surprise  me  at 
least  if  some  part  of  its  realism  is  a  folk  inheritance;  it 
would  be  strange  if  the  element  of  folk  did  not  exist  in 
the  work  of  a  muzhik  who  had  read  Western  literature 
and  science;  and  it  may  be  that  incidentally  we  are 
on  the  trail  of  a  new  idea,  that  art  is  always  rising  out 
of  folk-lore — the  romantic  spirit,  and  that  classic  art 
is  a  shedding  of  the  folk-lore  element,  for  whereas  Flau- 
bert described  Madame  Bovary's  house  because  she  lived 
there  always,  Tolstoy  described  an  inn  through  which 
some  travellers  pass,  telling,  among  many  other  things, 
the  number  of  freckles  on  the  nose  of  the  servant  girl  who 
brings  in  the  samovar.  Yes;  his  realism  is  as  irrelevant 
as  that  of  the  painter  Pinturicchio,  who  introduced  quails 
picking  grain  about  the  embowered  throne  of  the  virgin 
surrounded  by  saints  and  angels. 

Argument  as  to  what  is  romantic  and  what  is  classical 
art  has  filled  the  reviews  for  a  century  or  more,  without 
the  difficulty  showing  any  signs  of  clearing  up.  But  it 
has  come  to  seem  to  me  that  if  we  were  to  substitute  the 
words  folk  and  culture  for  the  words  romantic  and  classi- 


154  AVOWALS 

cal  we  should  be  in  the  straight  way  towards  apprehend- 
ing what  is  really  meant  by  the  words  classical  and  ro- 
mantic. Art  begins  in  the  irresponsible  imaginations  of 
the  people,  like  a  spring  in  a  mountain  waste;  the  spring 
rises  amid  rocks,  trickles  and  forms  a  rivulet,  swells  into 
a  stream,  and  after  many  wanderings,  perhaps  after  a 
brief  sojourn  in  artificial  ponds  and  basins,  it  returns  to 
the  earth  whence  it  came.  And  if  this  be  the  natural 
history  of  art,  Homer  is  art  emerging  out  of  folk,  and 
Sophocles  is  art  at  the  extreme  point  of  culture — the 
point  at  which  art  must  begin  to  decay.  In  Shakespeare 
we  find  culture  and  folk  side  by  side;  and  sometimes,  as 
in  Hamlet,  we  assist  at  the  shearing  away  of  the  folk  ele- 
ment from  the  tale.  As  You  Like  It  is  folk  in  substance; 
the  various  dukes  and  the  forest  denizens  are  pure  folk; 
but  the  writing  is  culture.  To  pass  from  literature  to 
painting,  we  stop  before  Pinturicchio,  who  seems  to  us  a 
very  tale-teller  among  people  emerging  from  the  religious 
gloom  of  the  Middle  Ages;  we  might  almost  call  him  the 
pavement  artist  of  an  artistic  period;  we  find  him  in  the 
midst  of  religious  processions,  in  narrow  Gothic  streets, 
always  delightfully  spontaneous,  telling  tales  of  saints 
and  miracles,  and  always  heedless  of  culture — that  is  to 
say,  of  proportions  and  anatomies.  Culture  enters  in  the 
person  of  Botticelli;  he  represents  it  in  its  first  stage  and 
Raphael  represents  it  in  its  last,  just  before  art  began  to 
slip  into  decadence. 

Perhaps  better  than  literature  or  painting,  architecture 
will  enable  me  to  show  how  art  is  always  rising  out  of 
folk  and  descending  into  culture.  The  Irish  Romanesque 
chapels  are  examples  of  pure  folk,  and  the  Gothic  cathe- 
drals are  examples  of  pure  culture,  but  while  the  archi- 
tecture of  Chartres  is  pure  culture,  the  sculpture  on  its 
walls  is  folk.  The  argument  might  be  prolonged  almost 
indefinitely,  but  it  is  germane  to  the  explanation  of  Tol- 
stoy's realism,  that  while  in  Italy,  art  progressed  gradually 


AVOWALS  155 

from  folk  into  culture — we  note  every  change,  its  beau- 
tiful progression  from  Pinturiccho  to  Michelangelo,  how 
it  paused,  how  Raphael  marked  the  pause,  and  how  it 
declined  from  Raphael  to  the  Carracci's  in  Russia,  owing, 
perhaps,  to  the  rapid  transmission  of  ideas  by  means  of 
newspapers  and  railways,  art,  folk  and  culture,  was 
pitched  pell-mell.  Tolstoy  is  but  a  Tartar  hungering  for 
the  desert,  and  reminds  us  in  more  than  one  photograph 
of  a  Hebrew  prophet,  and  in  one  extraordinary  photo- 
graph he  has  all  the  appearance  of  Jeremiah,  the  lean 
gesticulations,  the  perfervid  eyes.  And  looking  at  it 
we  hear  the  harsh  admonition:  I  stand  on  the  brink  of 
the  grave,  and  can  have  no  interest  in  telling  you  lies. 
Repent,  even  if  there  be  no  God;  repent,  even  if  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  be  illusory;  renounce  the  kingdom 
of  earth,  for  it  is  worthless. 


CHAPTER  7. 

NO  man  ever  walked  in  the  wrong  road  as  well  as  Tol- 
stoy, and  that  he  never  fell  into  the  right  one  is  a  pity, 
for  his  step  is  alert  and  vigorous,  and  would  have  carried 
him  into  works  of  the  highest  genius.  But  since  the 
quality  of  genius  is  an  instinctive  knowledge  of  the  road 
we  find  ourselves  being  pressed  towards  the  paradox  that 
Tolstoy  is  not  a  man  of  genius,  a  paradox  as  unreasonable 
as  many  of  Tolstoy's  own;  he  sought  reason  eagerly,  but 
his  search  only  led  him  into  paradox,  for  he  failed  to 
apprehend  that  there  are  two  reasons — man's  little  reason 
within  him,  and  the  greater  reason  outside  of  him,  call 
it  Providence,  God,  call  it  what  you  will,  but  the  fact 
is  clear  to  everybody  that  the  world  is  not  governed  by 
our  reason,  and  Tolstoy  wished  it  otherwise.  Another 
thing  he  could  not  understand:    that  the  charm  of  life 


156  AVOWALS 

is  in  the  fact  it  is  always  going  by  us,  and  this  stint  in  his 
nature  drove  him  into  theory;  continual,  uninterrupted 
theory  from  the  moment  he  put  pen  to  paper,  and  his  life 
must  have  been  theory  even  before  he  began  to  write. 
Theory  began  to  appear  in  his  book  about  the  Caucasus, 
and  that  was  a  young  man's  book;  and  theory  rose  its 
head  unabashed  in  its  first  great  work,  War  and  Peace. 
In  the  first  volume  it  begins  to  appear  intolerable  to  Tol- 
stoy that  a  man  whose  profession  was  war  should  stand 
before  the  world  as  a  man  of  genius;  and  to  destroy  the 
Napoleonic  legend  was  the  root  idea  of  War  and  Peace, 
rather  than  the  exhibition  of  man  in  the  enigma  of  his 
instincts.  He  is  at  pains  to  tell  us,  in  the  second  or  third 
volume,  that  Napoleon's  personality  counted  for  little  or 
nothing,  and  that  his  wars  were  merely  forces  of  nature 
driving  men  alternately  eastward  and  westward.  He 
would  even  persuade  us  that  the  Russian  General  who 
refused  to  follow  up  Napoleon's  retreat  was  a  man  of 
extraordinary  genius;  his  dilatoriness  is  extolled  as  a 
virtue,  and  he  is  held  up  to  our  admiration  as  one  of  the 
wise  fools  who,  knowing  that  the  hand  of  Providence  is 
everywhere,  is  content  to  allow  Providence  to  work  for 
them.  In  his  next  book,  Anna  Karena,  he  walks  in  the 
wrong  road  as  well  as  he  did  in  War  and  Peace,  for  it  was 
written  to  prove  that  if  a  woman  lives  unhappily  with 
one  husband,  and  leaves  him  for  the  man  she  loves,  her 
moral  character  will  disintegrate;  and  he  foresees  no  end 
for  her  but  suicide,  thereby  showing  that  his  theories  do 
not  even  emerge  from  facts  well  observed  and  collated, 
but  out  of  mere  prejudices.  If  he  had  only  bethought 
himself  of  consultation  with  a  girl  of  fourteen,  saying  to 
her:  tell  me,  my  dear  child,  what  you  think.  If  a  woman 
were  to  leave  her  husband  whom  she  detests,  and  went  to 
live  with  a  man  she  loved,  do  you  think  she  would  be 
unhappy?  The  child  of  fourteen  would  answer:  if  the 
man  she  loved  were  kind  to  her,  I  suppose  she  would  be 


AVOWALS  157 

happy  with  him.  Or  if  Tolstoy  had  only  thought  of  con- 
sulting the  china  bowl  in  the  hall,  into  which  visitors^ 
cards  are  thrown,  he  would  have  learnt  the  truth,  for  his 
wife  could  not  have  been  always  without  friends  who  were 
very  unhappy  in  their  first  marriage  (dissolved  through 
the  action  of  the  Divorce  Court)  and  happy  in  their  second. 
After  writing  Anna  Karena,  the  moral  pack  always  on 
his  trail  began  to  give  tongue  again,  and  he  tells  us  how 
he  was  forced  to  write  a  book  entitled  My  Religion,  and 
the  book  is  in  some  ways  a  more  interesting  one  than  any 
of  Tolstoy's  novels,  for  Tolstoy  was  not  a  liar  by  nature, 
lies  did  not  appeal  to  him,  though  he  was  a  terrible  liar, 
and  it  could  not  be  else,  for  he  desired  a  reasonable  world 
above  all  things — reasonable  according  to  his  reason,  and 
War  and  Peace  and  Anna  Karena  are  examples  of  the  lies 
a  too  ardent  desire  of  truth  led  him  into.  But  in  My 
Religion  he  is  not  beset  by  theory  and  half -beliefs;  he  is 
concerned  to  relate  himself,  and  he  tells  the  battle  be- 
tween an  extraordinary  clear  intelligence  and  an  extra- 
ordinarily powerful  temperament  as  it  has  never  been  told 
before.  His  intelligence  compels  him  to  admit  there  is 
no  grounds  for  believing  in  the  Gospels,  but  though  the 
Gospels  may  be  fabrications,  the  Gospel  teaching  is  es- 
sential. If  he  had  said  essential  to  me  he  would  have 
written  a  better  book,  but  he  will  have  it  that  the  teach- 
ing in  the  Gospels  is  essential  to  the  world,  and  almost 
anybody  could  have  told  Tolstoy  that  Christianity  was 
found  to  be  incompatible  with  life  in  the  second  century, 
and  that  the  business  of  the  Church  was  to  adapt  Chris- 
tianity to  life.  In  the  adaptation  the  mysteries  of  Ceres 
were  abolished,  but  evening  parties  received  the  sanc- 
tion of  the  Church,  if  not  in  the  second,  at  least  some 
centuries  later,  and  this  almost  initial  mistake  on  the 
part  of  the  Church  estranged  Tolstoy  from  his  Church; 
one  so  hopelessly  intelligent  as  Tolstoy  could  not  do  else 
than  regard  such  religion  as  essentially  unintelligent,  and 


158  AVOWALS 

what  is  worse,  unmoral,  and  having  discovered  in  his 
memories  of  his  youth  that  the  pleasure  we  derive  from 
evening  parties  is  directly  or  indirectly  a  sexual  pleasure, 
he  proceeded  to  write  a  story  about  an  evening  party,  and, 
as  is  usual  with  him,  he  brings  to  his  job  all  the  extraordi- 
nary literary  skill  that  he  brought  into  the  world,  and  it 
enabled  him  to  devise  a  fine  setting  for  a  story  that  might 
have  frightened  the  austere  St  Jerome,  who  wrote  in  a 
sudden  ecstasy:  Fornication  is  a  dung-heap,  marriage  is 
barley,  chastity  is  wheaten-flour. 

The  teller  of  Tolstoy's  new  story  is  a  man  who  mur- 
dered his  wife  because  he  committed  the  fatal  mistake  of 
falling  in  love  with  her  at  an  evening  party,  her  pretty 
figure,  which  a  jersey  showed  off  to  considerable  advan- 
tage, being  the  active  cause  of  the  wedding.  He  tells  his 
story  to  an  innocent  passenger  in  the  train :  that  he  loved 
and  hated  his  wife  by  turns,  and  that  at  last  she  could 
bear  with  him  no  longer  and  took  to  herself  a  lover,  a 
violinist  by  profession,  one  of  the  concomitants  of  even- 
ing parties,  as  are  immodest  gowns,  sandwiches  and  wine. 
A  man  must  be  a  man  of  genius  to  get  the  world  to  listen 
to  such  stories,  but  to  continue.  Having  gotten  her  lover, 
a  violinist,  she  does  exactly  what  most  women  would  do 
in  her  circumstances,  she  gives  an  evening  party,  and  at 
this  party  a  piece  of  music  was  performed  by  the  violinist, 
and  the  wife,  who  excelled  at  the  piano,  especially  in  a 
piece  called  the  Kreutzer  Sonata,  one  more  or  less  known 
to  all  cultivated  people  and  looked  upon  by  them  as  a 
natural  and  witty  piece  of  music,  in  the  humour  of  a 
Shakespearean  comedy.  In  no  other  way  do  we  look  upon 
the  Kreutzer  Sonata,  yourself  and  myself,  dear  reader;  but 
the  murderer,  speaking  through  Tolstoy,  heard  a  violent 
aphrodisiac  in  the  music,  and  was  at  last  driven  to  killing 
his  wife  with  a  stiletto,  driving  it  through  and  through 
the  jersey  which  had  provoked  his  love  of  her. 

Every  jot  of  Tolstoy's  ugly  temperament  went  into 


AVOWALS  159 

the  composition  of  this  book.  His  intelligence,  which  is 
great,  must  have  fought  a  fierce  battle  with  his  tempera- 
ment, which  is  strong.  Tolstoy  must  have  had  a  hell  of 
a  time  of  it,  like  the  parrot  that  was  plucked  by  the 
monkey,  while  writing  it.  Of  what  use  in  publishing  it, 
his  intelligence  must  have  cried  out  again  and  again  at 
various  points  of  the  story,  for  surely  men  will  never  be 
born  who  will  marry  women  who  are  physically  disagree- 
able to  them.  It  matters  not,  cried  Temperament,  for 
whosoever  indulges  in  the  pleasure  of  female  beauty  is 
certain  to  repeat  his  pleasure.  It  may  be,  as  you  state, 
Intelligence  replied.  But  of  what  use  to  cry  out  against 
what  cannot  be  altered,  and  of  all  the  ugly  things  you 
have  ever  said,  this  book  is  the  ugliest.  It  matters  not 
if  it  be  moral,  replied  Temperament.  Stay  your  hand, 
Intelligence  implored,  before  it  is  too  late.  This  book 
will  provoke  comment  about  your  relations  with  your 
wife,  and  you  have  had  thirteen  children  by  her.  But 
Tolstoy's  temperament  was  never  stayed  by  his  intelli- 
gence. Has  he  not  said  that  if  a  man  has  stripped  himself 
of  everything  but  one  blanket  he  should  share  it  with  a 
leper  if  the  leper  wants  a  blanket?  And  not  having 
found  a  leper  with  whom  to  share  his  blanket,  he,  in 
imitation  of  the  early  hermits,  elected  to  live  in  a  sheel- 
ing,  but  in  a  sheeling  that  communicates  with  folding 
doors  with  his  wife's  apartment.  And  he  will  not  sleep 
upon  a  spring  mattress,  he  must  have  a  feather  bed,  the 
one  he  sleeps  upon  costs  more  than  any  spring  mattress- 
His  rooms  are  quite  plain,  but  to  paint  and  heat  them 
to  his  liking  workmen  had  to  be  brought  from  England. 
In  some  ways  Tolstoy  reminds  us  of  Captain  Verney,  the 
discord  between  conduct  and  conscience  is  almost  as 
great.  He  is  loquacious,  which  Verney  was  not,  and  he 
complains  that  family  ties  prevented  him  from  bringing 
his  own  life  into  conformity  with  his  theory  of  life;  and 
his  words  on  this  subject,  and  indeed  on  every  subject 


160  AVOWALS 

that  he  writes  upon,  hardly  allow  a  doubt  that  Tolstoy's 
life,  in  spite  of  his  fortune  and  his  genius,  has  been  one 
of  the  unhappiest  lives  ever  lived  in  this  world.  Nor  is 
the  reason  far  to  seek:  everyone  is  unhappy  whose  life 
is  not  consonant  with  his  ideas.  He  sought  a  doctrine 
of  morality  in  the  Gospels;  he  has  not  found  a  sufficient 
one,  for  there  are  earlier  and  later  texts:  Be  not  angry 
with  thy  brother  without  just  cause  is  a  later  text  that 
appears  to  Tolstoy  far  too  reasonable  to  be  authentic, 
and  he  told  Mr  Stead,  moved  by  a  sudden  suspicion,  how 
he  went  to  Moscow  and  looked  up  the  earliest  texts,  and 
that  it  was  just  as  he  suspected.  The  earliest  texts  ran: 
Be  not  angry  with  thy  brother,  which  is,  of  course,  much 
finer  than  the  later  texts,  but  altogether  incompatible  with 
life  as  it  is  lived  in  this  world.  So  Mr  Stead  felt,  and  for 
his  own  instruction  and  for  his  readers'  he  asked  Tolstoy 
if  he  admitted  no  exceptions  to  his  doctrine  of  the  non- 
resistance  of  evil:  should  he  not  use  force  to  prevent  a 
drunken  man  from  kicking  a  child  to  death?  Tolstoy 
admitted  that  this  was  an  exceptional  case,  and  Mr  Stead 
took  his  leave  on  these  words.  But  not  long  after  he  re- 
ceived a  letter  from  Tolstoy,  who  had  been  thinking  it 
over,  an  exception  invalidated  the  theory,  so  he  was  con- 
strained to  write  to  Mr  Stead  withdrawing  his  admission 
that  there  might  be  exceptional  cases,  saying  that  not 
even  in  the  case  of  a  drunkard  kicking  a  child  to  death 
should  evil  be  resisted. 

Tolstoy  is  not  often  pathetic,  but  he  is  in  this  letter;  he 
loved  truth,  but  he  loved  theory  better,  and  had  to  write 
an  untruth  to  Mr  Stead.  Poor  Tolstoy!  we  must  not  be 
too  hard  on  him;  we  must  try  to  appreciate  the  fact,  how- 
ever strange  it  may  appear  to  us  to  be,  that  there  are 
some  amongst  us  who  cannot  live  without  a  theory  of  life, 
and  for  the  sake  of  their  theory  will  sacrifice  every  truth 
in  argument.  We  must  not  be  too  harsh:  we  must  try 
to  appreciate  the  fact  that  abstract  intellectualism  is 


AVOWALS  161 

necessary  to  some  men,  and  that  because  their  conduct 
often  impinges  on  a  theory  they  would  not  do  well  to 
put  aside  the  theories,  for  that  it  has  not  stood  the  test  of 
actual  experience.  These  are  our  weaker,  our  Christian 
brethren.  Were  you  to  say  to  Tolstoy:  I  am  willing  to 
live  in  obedience  to  a  moral  standard,  but  which  moral 
standard,  for  there  are  many,  he  would  answer  that  there 
is  but  one.  Read  the  Gospels  and  find  it.  But  it  may  hap 
that  you  know  the  Gospels  as  well  as  Tolstoy,  and  if  so 
you  answer:  the  Gospels  teach  different  moralities,  which 
am  I  to  accept?  Tolstoy  would  answer:  I  surmise  you 
yourself  are  forced  to  make  a  selection  of  Christ's  teach- 
ing, and  you  will  find  one  in  the  Gospels  that  is  in  agree- 
ment with  the  voice  of  conscience,  and  though  sure  of 
nothing  else,  you  are  sure  that  your  conscience  is  speaking. 
But  no  man's  conscience  tells  him,  Tolstoy's  interrogator 
replies,  that  he  should  not  use  force  to  prevent  a  drunkard 
from  kicking  a  child  to  death. 

Tolstoy's  ears  are  so  tuned  that  he  can  only  hear  a 
regular  beat,  elisions  are  disagreeable  to  his  ear,  and  he 
is  prone  to  remove  nature's,  thereby  spoiling  a  beautiful 
story,  for  the  anecdote  that  inspired  him  to  write  Resur- 
rection is  beautiful.  A  judge  who  had  tried  a  Finnish  girl 
for  stealing  told  Tolstoy  how  one  of  the  jurymen,  a  man 
who  had  never  shown  any  interest  in  ethical  questions 
before,  was  so  overcome  by  the  thought  that  he  and  eleven 
other  sinners  were  called  upon  to  condemn  a  thirteenth 
sinner  that  he  obtained  permission  to  visit  the  girl  in 
prison.  He  offered  himself  in  marriage,  and  the  girl  ac- 
cepted his  offer  gladly,  seeing  in  a  rich  marriage  endless 
gratification  of  her  desires.  But  perceiving  in  time  that 
she  did  not  understand  the  sacrifice  he  was  making,  the 
man  withdrew.  Some  years  afterwards  he  married  a  girl 
of  his  own  class,  one  who  shared  his  ideas,  but  it  appears 
that  he  did  not  succeed  in  living  happily  with  her.  This 
is  the  story  that  came  off  Nature's  loom:   it  is  rare  that 


162  AVOWALS 

Nature  succeeds  in  weaving  a  complete  story,  but  this 
time  Nature  was  an  artist,  and  Tourgueneff,  Nature's 
accomplice,  would  have  recognised  the  beauty  of  the  story 
and  judged  himself  to  be  the  humble  reporter  of  it.  But 
Tolstoy,  who  was  always  more  of  a  moralist  than  an  artist, 
felt  that  this  beautiful  story  must  be  altered,  and  in  his 
version  of  it  the  conscientious  juryman,  who  had  never 
seen  the  girl  till  he  saw  her  in  the  dock,  became  her  origi- 
nal seducer,  for  unless  the  story  could  be  worked  into  a 
theory,  that  if  a  girl  indulges  in  love  outside  of  marriage 
she  will  become  a  prostitute  and  a  drunkard,  it  would  not 
be  worth  telling.  Nor  was  this  alteration  sufficient,  the 
story  had  to  be  distorted  still  further,  for  the  law  against 
theft  would  only  allow  the  judge  to  condemn  the  girl  to 
a  few  months'  imprisonment,  and  for  the  sake  of  his 
morals  Tolstoy  must  needs  have  her  sent  to  Siberia  and 
is  thereby  constrained  to  tell  us  that  the  girl  did  not  wish 
to  poison  the  merchant  who  visited  her,  but  another 
woman  in  the  house  did,  and  that  the  girl  was  in  some 
measure  her  dupe. 

It  seems  almost  unnecessary  to  say  that  a  man  so  in- 
terested in  moral  theories  soon  lost  interest  in  character, 
and  we  remember  that  when  he  wrote  Pierre,  his  most 
successful  adventure  into  art,  he  was  forty  years  younger, 
less  hard,  narrow,  one  might  say  less  vindictive.  Resur- 
rection was  written  in  his  old  age,  and  we  find  in  it  a  por- 
trait of  Tolstoy  himself,  Tolstoy  in  caricature.  The 
moralist  has  triumphed  altogether  over  the  artist,  but  the 
power,  the  natural  gifts  that  Tolstoy  brought  into  the 
world,  the  gift  of  imaginative  vision  is  in  this  book  as 
plainly  as  it  is  in  the  other  books,  but  instead  of  being  a 
help  it  is  a  let,  a  hindrance,  making  the  book  a  sort  of 
sermon  interspersed  with  realistic  descriptions  thrown  in, 
one  might  say  scattered  broadcast,  without  order  or  fore- 
sight. Not  once  but  twice  our  attention  is  called  to  the 
thick  sweating  neck  of  an  inn  servant,  a  woman  who 


AVOWALS  163 

never  appears  in  the  story  again,  nor  does  the  inn  in  which 
she  serves  appear  again,  and  when  the  conscientious  jury- 
man visits  his  properties  he  meets  a  woman  carrying  a 
fowl — a  fowl  that  is  going  to  be  cooked  for  the  landlord's 
dinner  that  night,  but  the  fact  that  the  fowl  was  within 
an  hour  of  being  converted  into  food  did  not  prevent 
Tolstoy  from  describing  it  minutely,  even  to  its  legs, 
which  we  are  told  were  covered  with  black  feathers  of  a 
certain  length.  Yet  in  his  book  entitled  What  is  Art? 
he  writes :  In  literary  art  this  method  [the  realistic  method] 
consists  in  describing  in  minutest  details,  the  external  ap- 
pearance, the  faces,  the  clothes,  the  gestures,  the  tones, 
and  the  habitations  of  the  characters  represented,  with 
all  the  occurrences  met  with  in  life.  For  instance,  in 
novels,  in  stories,  when  one  of  the  characters  speaks  we 
are  told  in  what  voice  he  spoke,  and  what  he  was  doing 
at  the  time.  And  the  things  said  are  not  given  so  that 
they  should  have  as  much  sense  as  possible,  but  as  they 
are  in  life,  disconnectedly,  and  with  interruptions  and 
omissions. 

When  Tolstoy  wrote  this  passage  of  exordium  he  must 
have  forgotten  the  sweating  neck  of  the  inn  servant,  the 
feathered  legs  of  the  fowl  and  the  twelve  jurymen  whose 
appearances  are  described  in  such  detail  that  we  have 
forgotten  the  first  before  we  have  read  about  the  third. 
We  should  be  glad  to  forget  Tolstoy's  inconsistencies  and 
enjoy  the  very  amusing  description  of  the  rehearsal  with 
which  the  book  begins.  Tolstoy,  had  he  been  less  aggres- 
sive in  his  relation  of  an  opera — Cherubino's  Water  Carrier 
— an  opera  from  which  he  must  have  gotten  pleasure  at 
some  earlier  period  of  his  life,  perhaps  that  is  why  he 
is  so  bitter,  insisting  that  because  everyone  does  not  like 
operas,  the  money  spent  on  operas  had  better  be  spent 
in  a  more  useful  way — this  argument  would  have  more 
force.  But  would  it?  For  is  it  not  impossible  to  find 
several  to  agree  regarding  a  project  on  which  money 


164  AVOWALS 

may  be  spent  usefully?  And  passing  from  the  amusing 
to  the  serious  part  of  the  book,  to  what  Tolstoy  would 
call  the  useful,  and  what  we  call  the  wasteful,  we  find 
that  Tolstoy  has  read  everything  that  the  professors  of 
aesthetics  have  written  on  the  subject,  and  opinions  are 
given  from  German,  English,  French  and  Italian  writers, 
but  none  of  them  can  supply  a  satisfactory  definition  of 
what  is  art,  and  Tolstoy  thereby  concludes  that  because 
beauty  eludes  definition  it  does  not  exist.  But  morality  is 
equally  hard  to  define,  yet — we  will  not  labour  the  point. 
Tolstoy  quotes  Baumgarten,  who  held  the  belief  that  the 
Greek  ideal  beauty  is  the  highest  that  men  have  ever 
discovered.  But  Tolstoy  believes  in  progress,  and  it  seems 
to  him  absurd  to  think  that  the  very  best  that  can  be 
done  by  the  art  of  nations  after  nineteen  hundred  years 
of  Christian  teaching  is  to  choose,  as  the  ideal  of  their  life, 
an  ideal  that  was  held  by  an  unmoral,  semi-savage  slave- 
owning  people  who  lived  two  thousand  years  ago,  who 
modelled  the  human  body  extremely  well,  and  who  erected 
buildings  pleasing  to  look  at.  That  is  how  Tolstoy  views 
the  race  that  has  occupied  the  thoughts  of  men  more  than 
any  other,  preferring  by  far  a  tribe  of  verminous  Bedouins 
who,  after  wandering  for  some  years  in  the  neighbourhood 
of  Mount  Sinai,  settled  in  Palestine.  He  prefers  Hebrew 
literature  to  Greek,  for  although  the  Bible  contained  many 
exhortations  to  murder,  it  was  not  written  to  give  pleasure. 
And  he  speaks  of  these  two  literatures  because  they  are 
the  oldest  and  more  read  to-day  than  any  other,  and  for 
that  every  man  must  cast  his  lot  with  the  Greeks  or  the 
Hebrews.  Tolstoy  prefers  the  Psalms  to  iEschylus,  but  in 
placing  Hebrew  literature  above  Greek  he  overlooks  the 
fact  that  Greek  literature  has  survived  its  mythologies; 
Prometheus  has  outlived  his  persecutor  Zeus,  and  Tolstoy 
does  not  trouble  to  answer  the  question  that  comes  to 
everybody's  mind  to  ask:  will  the  Psalms  outlive  Jehovah? 
The  idea  he  desires  to  press  forward  is  that  art  is  worthless 


AVOWALS  165 

unless  inspired  by  religious  ideas.  Better  still,  by  a  moral 
idea.  We  pause  to  think:  moral  ideas  are  always  chang- 
ing, and  what  is  wrong  in  one  age  is  right  in  another; 
whereas  beauty  may  be  said  to  be  eternal.  We  do  not 
plead  that  the  standard  of  beauty  knows  no  modifications, 
but  it  is  surely  certain  that  the  verses  of  Homer  and  the 
sculpture  of  Phidias  have  outlived  many  moralities. 

Tolstoy  does  not  like  modern  French  art,  but  he  cannot 
condemn  art  as  bad  art  merely  because  it  is  incomprehen- 
sible to  him  unless  he  declares  all  art  to  be  bad,  which  he 
is  unwilling  to  do.  So  we  get  back  to  our  friends  the 
peasants.  To  which  peasant,  we  ask — Russian,  English  or 
French?  Is  he  or  she  fifteen  or  sixty?  Is  he  or  she  the 
most  intelligent  in  the  village?  Or  is  he  or  she  the  least 
intelligent?  are  the  questions  we  put  to  Tolstoy,  and  his 
answer  is:  the  peasant  representing  the  average  intelli- 
gence of  the  village.  Why  should  the  lowest  intelligence 
be  excluded?  If  the  peasant  is  the  best  judge  of  what  is 
art,  why  should  not  the  best  art  be  produced  by  peasants? 
This  question  Tolstoy  dares  to  face,  and  this  is  how  he 
faces  it.  He  tells  how  he  once  assisted  at  a  performance 
of  the  play  of  Hamlet.  The  part  was  played  by  one  of  the 
greatest  actors  of  the  world,  but  Tolstoy  experienced  all 
the  time — I  give  his  words — that  particular  suffering 
which  is  caused  by  false  imitations  of  works  of  art.  And 
to  enable  us  to  follow  the  drift  of  his  mind  he  describes  the 
performance  of  a  play  given  by  the  Voguls,  a  savage  tribe, 
in  which  a  bird  warns  the  reindeer  of  their  danger,  and 
this  play  inspired  in  Tolstoy  feelings  which  all  true  art 
inspires. 

A  big  Vogul  and  a  little  one,  both  dressed  in  reindeer 
skins,  represent  a  reindeer  doe  and  its  young.  A  third 
Vogul  with  a  bow  represents  a  huntsman  on  snow-shoes, 
and  a  fourth  imitates  with  his  voice  a  bird  that  warns  the 
reindeer  of  their  danger.  The  play  is  that  the  huntsman 
follows  the  track  that  the  doe  with  its  young  has  tra- 


166  AVOWALS 

veiled.  The  deer  run  off  the  scene  and  again  reappear. 
(Such  performances  take  place  in  a  small  tent-house.) 
The  huntsman  gains  more  and  more  on  the  pursued.  The 
little  deer  is  tired,  and  presses  against  its  mother.  The 
doe  stops  to  draw  breath.  The  hunter  comes  up  with 
them  and  draws  his  bow.  But  just  then  the  bird  sounds 
its  note,  warning  the  deer  of  their  danger.  They  escape. 
Again  there  is  a  chase,  and  again  the  hunter  gains  on 
them,  catches  them,  and  lets  fly  his  arrow.  The  arrow 
strikes  the  young  deer.  Unable  to  run,  the  little  one 
presses  against  its  mother.  The  mother  licks  its  wound. 
The  hunter  draws  another  arrow.  The  audience,  as  the 
eye-witness  describes,  are  paralysed  with  suspense;  deep 
groans  and  even  weeping  is  heard  among  them.  And 
from  mere  description  I  felt  that  this  was  a  true  work  of  art. 

What  I  am  saying  will  be  considered  irrational  paradox, 
at  which  one  can  only  be  amazed. 

But  the  question  comes  of  the  value  of  this  exhibition 
of  Tolstoy's  hard,  isolated,  tenacious  apprehensions.  It 
seems  to  me  that  Nature  has  answered  this  question  by 
devising  a  death  for  Tolstoy  that  reads  so  like  an  admoni- 
tion that  we  cannot  but  suspect  the  eternal  wisdom  of 
a  certain  watchfulness  over  human  life.  Of  the  nature 
of  this  watchfulness  we  know  nothing.  We  interrogate 
Nature  and  get  no  answer:  like  a  parrot  Nature  sits,  a 
wrinkled  drooping  eyelid  falling  over  a  round,  sleepy  eye, 
but  as  soon  as  we  forget  her,  Nature,  like  the  parrot, 
speaks  words  so  appropriate  to  the  occasion  that  we  find 
it  hard  to  reject  the  belief  that  Polly  is  not  unaware  that 
her  words  carry  a  meaning.  Can  we  doubt  that  St 
Helena,  with  Napoleon  gazing  blankly  at  the  ocean, 
carries  a  meaning,  and  is  not  the  end  that  Nature  devised 
for  Tolstoy  as  significant,  a  flight  from  his  wife  and  home 
in  his  eighty-second  year,  and  his  death  in  the  waiting- 
room  of  a  wayside  station  in  the  early  hours  of  a  March 
morning? 


AVOWALS  167 


CHAPTER  8. 

IN  the  beginning  of  the  last  century  a  musician,  Felicien 
David,  came  to  Algeria  with  some  painters  in  search  of 
art  (in  those  days  local  colour  was  looked  upon  as  art), 
and  hearing  the  Arabs  singing  round  their  camp  fires 
rhythms  that  seemed  to  him  unknown  in  Western  Europe, 
he  introduced  many  of  them  into  his  symphony,  Le  DSsert, 
and  with  such  good  result  that  when  his  symphony  was 
performed  in  Paris  Berlioz  wrote  an  article  entitled  A  New 
Beethoven.  For  some  days,  some  weeks,  or  some  months, 
David  and  his  symphony  were  the  subject  of  discussion 
in  inartistic  circles,  but  one  evening  Auber,  who  had  not 
ventured  an  opinion  till  then,  said,  on  being  pressed  to 
give  one:  I  will  wait  till  David  gets  off  his  camel;  and 
in  the  nineties,  for  no  better  reason  than  Beethoven's 
name  was  spoken  in  connection  with  David,  Shake- 
speare's was  evoked  when  Mr  Kipling  came  to  England 
with  Plain  Tales  from  the  Hills.  For  local  colour  was  still 
looked  upon  as  art,  and  Mr  Kipling's  stories  were  filled 
even  fuller  with  hookahs  and  elephants,  parakeets  and 
crocodiles,  than  Le  DSsert  with  Arab  rhythms. 

Life  does  but  repeat  itself,  but  there  is  always  a  shade 
of  difference  in  every  repetition,  so  it  was  not  a  fellow- 
writer  but  the  editor  of  Lippincottfs  Magazine  who  asked 
Mr  Kipling  to  get  off  his  camel.  His  proposal  to  Mr 
Kipling  was  for  a  story  in  which  there  should  not  be  many 
camels,  and  Mr  Kipling  must  have  tried  his  best  to  comply 
with  the  editor's  conditions,  for  there  are  a  few  in  the 
beginning  of  The  Light  that  Failed,  none  afterwards — not 
as  the  story  was  written  for  Lippincottfs,  but  it  was  re- 
written, and  the  second  version  ends  amid  a  herd  of  camels. 
The  hero  is  a  special  artist  who  has  done  some  sketches 
in  the  East;  his  sketches,  we  feel  sure,  were  wash  draw- 
ings, and  they  attracted  so  much  attention  that  a  dealer 


168  AVOWALS 

tried  to  buy  the  lot,  but  the  special  artist  said :  I  know  a 
trick  worth  two  of  that,  and  forthright  laid  plans  for 
making  as  much  money  as  possible.  The  analogy  between 
the  special  artist  and  Mr  Kipling  is  plain  indeed,  and  it 
led  many  subtle  critics  to  suspect  that  Mr  Kipling  would 
not  show  himself  to  be  what  is  known  as  a  creative  artist 
in  the  subsequent  stages  of  his  career — by  creative  artist 
is  meant  one  who  is  able  through  sympathy  to  imagine 
men  and  women  living  in  ideas  and  emotions  alien  to 
him;  and  if  this  be  a  true  definition  of  a  creative  artist, 
Mr  Kipling  was  certainly  not  one  in  The  Light  that  Failed. 
He  knew  what  the  journalist  was  through  himself,  for 
there  is  a  good  deal  of  the  journalist  in  Mr  Kipling,  and 
he  had  observed  journalists,  but  not  being  willing  that 
his  hero,  Dick  Helder,  should  remain  a  pure  and  un- 
mitigated journalist,  he  does  the  very  thing  that  a 
journalist  would  do  in  the  circumstances,  he  sets  him 
painting  Melancholia,  Albert  Diirer's  subject,  thereby 
lowering  his  hero  to  the  condition  of  a  melancholy  fool 
and  exposing  his  own  poverty  of  invention.  Let  this, 
however,  be  said  in  defence  of  Mr  Kipling  the  artist,  The 
Light  that  Failed  seems  to  have  revealed  to  him  his 
limitations;  we  are  not  aware  of  any  other  attempt  of 
Mr  Kipling  in  imaginative  representation  of  men  and 
women,  and  the  knowledge  of  one  limitation  is  the  sure 
sign  of  the  artist.  Mr  Kipling  is  an  artist  in  a  measure; 
his  power  over  words  makes  him  one,  and  we  can  but 
regret  that  we  do  not  find  among  his  many  gifts  the 
supreme  gift. 

The  phrase  I  have  attributed  to  Dick  Helder,  I  know 
a  trick  worth  two  of  that,  does  not  appear  in  the  story  en- 
titled The  Light  that  Failed,  but  the  personality  of  this 
special  artist,  except  when  he  tries  to  paint  a  picture  of 
Melancholia  is  racy  of  I  know  a  trick  worth  two  of  that. 
The  words  are  in  a  way  an  abridgment,  a  compendium 
of  Dick  Helder's  attitude  towards  life;  he  browses  like  a 


AVOWALS  169 

horse  in  tether  within  the  circle  of  I  know  a  trick  worth 
two  of  that.  I  know  a  trick  worth  two  of  that  is  the 
keynote  of  Mr  Kipling's  mind.  It  is  the  key  in  which 
he  always  writes;  he  indulges  in  some  modulations,  but 
the  key  of  I  know  a  trick  worth  two  of  that  is  never 
quite  out  of  his  ear,  and  if  one  were  so  minded,  one  could 
trace  it  through  all  his  prose  and  a  good  many  poems. 
Nearly  the  whole  of  Kim  is  written  in  this  key;  now  and 
then  he  modulates  into  the  world  and  its  shows,  the 
Great  Wheel,  etc.,  but  one  knows  that  the  terrible  key — 
I  know  a  trick  worth  two  of  that — is  never  far  off.  And 
he  delights  in  Kim,  just  as  he  delighted  in  Dick,  and  his 
admiration  is  so  spontaneous  that  it  is  impossible  to  read 
Kim  without  saying  to  oneself :  Kim  is  Mr  Kipling.  Kim 
is  never  taken  in,  and  not  to  be  taken  in  is  in  Mr  Kipling's 
eyes  a  sort  of  north  star  whereby  one  steers  the  bark  of 
life.  Kim  is  a  spy,  but  spying  is  called  the  Great  Game, 
and  nothing  matters  so  long  as  you  are  not  taken  in,  and 
Mr  Kipling's  beast-kind  is  the  same  as  his  mankind;  the 
animals  in  the  Jungle  Books  that  we  are  to  admire  are 
those  that  know  a  trick  worth  two  of  that.  He  does  not 
venture  among  godkind,  but  if  he  did,  his  gods  too  would 
know  a  trick  worth  two  of  that. 

Now  it  is  a  moot  question  if  an  author's  mind  extends 
beyond  the  characters  he  creates.  Did  not  Baude- 
laire say  that  in  Balzac  even  the  porters  had  genius? 
Among  Mr  Kipling's  works  there  is  a  book  called  The 
Gadsbys,  and  the  theme  is  that  if  a  man  wants  to  get  on 
in  the  army  he  should  not  get  married.  This  will  seem, 
to  those  who  admire  the  book,  an  unfair  description  of  it; 
but  we  must  not  be  deceived  by  the  external  form — we 
must,  if  we  would  appreciate  a  writer,  take  into  account 
his  attitude  towards  life,  we  must  discover  if  his  version  is 
mean  or  noble,  spiritual  or  material,  narrow  or  wide;  for 
all  things  are  in  the  eye  that  sees,  the  ear  that  hears,  the 
brain  that  remembers,  the  earliest  and  latest  philosophy 


170  AVOWALS 

that  is;  and  in  the  eighties  none  knew  what  world  Mr 
Kipling  was  about  to  reveal;  but  his  world  is  before 
us  now,  and  noble  and  beautiful  are  not  the  adjectives 
that  anyone  would  choose  wherewith  to  designate  the 
world  of  Kipling.  Rough,  harsh,  coarse-grained,  come 
into  our  minds;  Mr  Kipling's  world  is  a  barracks  full  of 
oaths  and  clatter  of  sabres;  but  his  language  is  so  copious, 
rich  and  sonorous  that  one  is  tempted  to  say  that  none 
since  the  Elizabethans  has  written  so  copiously.  Others 
have  written  more  beautifully,  but  no  one  that  I  can  call 
to  mind  at  this  moment  has  written  so  copiously.  Shelley 
and  Wordsworth,  Landor  and  Pater,  wrote  with  part  of 
the  language;  but  who  else,  except  Whitman,  has  written 
with  the  whole  language  since  the  Elizabethans?  The 
flannelled  fool  at  the  wicket,  the  muddied  oaf  of  the  goal, 
is  wonderful  language.  He  writes  with  the  eye  that  ap- 
preciates all  that  the  eye  can  see,  but  of  the  heart  he 
knows  nothing,  for  the  heart  cannot  be  observed;  his 
characters  are  therefore  external,  and  they  are  stationary. 
At  first  we  are  taken  by  Kim,  for  he  is  well  seen,  well 
observed,  well  copied;  the  Lama  too  we  can  see  as  if  he 
were  before  us — an  old  man  in  a  long  habit  has  his  rosary 
hanging  from  the  girdle,  and  we  hear  his  continuous 
mumbling;  but  before  many  pages  we  begin  to  perceive 
that  Kim  and  the  Lama  are  fixed,  and  we  have  not  read 
fifty  pages  before  the  conviction  dawns  that  those  two 
will  be  the  same  at  the  end  of  the  book  as  they  were  in 
the  beginning. 

The  Lama  has  come  from  Tibet  in  search  of  a  sacred 
river,  and  at  the  outset  of  his  journey  he  meets  a  street 
arab,  precocious  and  vile  in  his  every  instinct,  and  these 
two  make  common  cause,  for  they  are  the  pegs  whereon 
Mr  Kipling  intends  to  hang  his  descriptions  of  India.  If 
they  are  no  more  than  blunt  pegs  I  would  like  them 
better,  but  they  are  carved  a  little,  a  little  here  and  there; 
but  let  the  carving  pass;   something  must  be  granted  to 


AVOWALS  171 

every  writer.  Mr  Kipling's  object  is  to  describe  India, 
and  we  shall  see  how  he  does  this;  he  shall  be  measured 
by  our  measure,  and  a  fair  one  it  will  be  judged,  for  it  is 
applicable  though  the  writer  be  describing  a  sunset  or  an 
old  woman  peeling  onions,  whether  he  is  putting  words 
into  the  mouth  of  a  tramp  or  of  a  philosopher.  How 
much  of  the  precious  wine  of  life  do  we  taste,  and  in  what 
intensity  do  we  taste  it,  while  reading  is  our  standard 
measure,  whether  the  art  under  consideration  be  literature 
or  painting,  whether  the  literature  be  prose  or  poetry; 
and  having  stated  our  measure  of  criticism,  we  will  pro- 
ceed with  the  measurement  of  Mr  Kipling: 

They  entered  the  fort-like  railway  station,  black  in  the 
end  of  night;  the  electrics  sizzling  over  the  goods-yard, 
where  they  handle  the  heavy  Northern  grain-traffic. 

How  strong  the  rhythm,  lacking  perhaps  in  subtlety, 
like  the  tramp  of  policemen,  but  a  splendid  rhythm. 
And  it  is  Mr  Kipling's  own  rhythm;  he  borrows  from  no 
man,  and  it  is  always  a  pleasure  to  read  or  hear  unborrowed 
literature  or  music. 

A  little  farther  on  we  find  ourselves  in  the  middle  of  a 
spacious  paragraph,  the  sentences  moving  to  the  same 
sonorous  march  measure: 

Then  it  came  out  in  those  worldly  days  he  had  been  a 
master-hand  at  casting  horoscopes  and  nativities,  and  the 
family  priest  led  him  on  to  describe  his  methods,  each 
giving  the  planets  names  that  the  other  could  not  under- 
stand, and  pointing  upwards  as  the  big  stars  sailed  across 
the  dark.  The  children  of  the  house  tugged  unrebuked 
at  his  rosary;  and  he  clean  forgot  the  Rule  which  forbids 
looking  at  women  as  he  talked  of  enduring  snows,  land- 
slips, blocked  passages,  the  remote  cliffs  where  men  find 
sapphires  and  turquoise,  and  that  wonderful  upland  road 
that  leads  at  last  into  great  China  itself. 


172  AVOWALS 

And  how  finely  it  ends,  that  long  sentence  stretching 
itself  out  like:  the  upland  road  that  leads  at  last  into 
great  China  itself! 

In  saying  these  things  we  are  praising  Mr  Kipling's 
technical  excellence,  but  technical  excellence  is  of  no 
value  for  us  except  as  a  means  through  which  life  is 
revealed. 

A  few  pages  farther  on  we  come  upon  a  description  of 
evening;  and  evening  is  one  of  the  eternal  subjects — men 
were  sensible  to  the  charm  and  beauty  and  the  tenderness 
of  evening  ten  thousand  years  ago,  and  ten  thousand 
years  hence  they  will  be  moved  in  the  same  way: 

By  this  time  the  sun  was  driving  broad  golden  spokes 
through  the  lower  branches  of  the  mango-trees;  the 
parakeets  and  doves  were  coming  home  in  their  hundreds ; 
the  chattering  grey-backed  Seven  Sisters,  talking  over 
the  day's  adventures,  walked  back  and  forth  in  twos  and 
threes  almost  under  the  feet  of  the  travellers;  the  shuf- 
flings and  scufflings  in  the  branches  showed  that  the  bats 
were  ready  to  go  out  on  the  night  picket.  Swiftly  the 
light  gathered  itself  together,  painted  for  an  instant  the 
faces  and  the  cartwheels  and  bullocks'  horns  as  red  as 
blood.  Then  the  night  fell,  changing  the  touch  of  the 
air,  drawing  a  low,  even  haze  like  a  gossamer  veil  of  blue 
across  the  face  of  the  country,  and  bringing  out,  keen  and 
distinct,  the  smell  of  wood-smoke  and  cattle  and  the 
good  scent  of  wheaten  cakes  cooked  on  ashes.  The 
evening  patrol  hurried  out  of  the  police-station  with  im- 
portant coughings  and  reiterated  orders;  and  a  live  char- 
coal ball  in  the  cup  of  a  wayside  carter's  hookah  glowed 
red  while  Kim's  eyes  mechanically  watched  the  last 
flicker  of  the  sun  on  the  brass  tweezers. 

No  one  will  deny  the  perfection  of  the  writing,  of  the 
strong  masculine  rhythm  of  every  sentence,  and  of  the 


AVOWALS  173 

accuracy  of  every  observation.  But  it  seems  to  us  that 
Mr  Kipling  has  seen  much  more  than  he  has  felt;  and  we 
prefer  feeling  to  seeing;  and  when  we  come  to  analyse 
the  lines  we  find  a  touch  of  local  colour  not  only  in  every 
sentence,  but  in  each  part  between  each  semicolon:  The 
sun  was  driving  golden  spokes  through  the  branches  of 
the  mango  trees,  the  'parakeets,  the  doves,  the  chattering 
grey -backed  Seven  Sisters,  the  bats  ready  to  go  out  on  the 
night  picket,  the  light  painting  the  faces  and  the  cartwheels 
and  the  bullocks'  horns.  At  last  a  sentence  that  does  not 
carry  any  local  colour:  then  the  night  fell,  changing  the 
touch  of  the  air,  drawing  a  low  even  haze  like  a  gossamer 
veil  of  blue  across  the  face  of  the  country,  but  after  the 
comma  local  colour  begins  again,  bringing  out,  keen  and 
distinct,  the  smell  of  wood-smoke  and  cattle,  and  the  cakes, 
etc.  Then  there  is  the  evening  patrol  and  the  live  char- 
coal ball,  and  then  Kim's  eyes  watching  the  flicker  of  the 
sun  on  the  brass  tweezers. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  find  a  passage  in  literature  of  the 
same  length  so  profusely  touched  with  local  colour.  Was 
it  not  a  shame  to  observe  that  slender  wistful  hour  so 
closely?  Mr  Kipling  seems  to  have  followed  it  about  like 
a  detective  employed  in  a  divorce  case — like  Kim  himself, 
who  is  a  political  spy.  We  prefer  an  evening  by  Pierre 
Loti;  he  experiences  a  sensation,  and  his  words  transmit 
the  sensation,  and  remind  us  of  many  things  that  we  have 
experienced  at  sunsetting.  Loti's  touch  is  perhaps  a  little 
superficial,  a  little  facile,  the  feeling  is  perhaps  genteel, 
even  trite,  but  with  all  there  is  more  wistfulness  in  Loti 
than  in  Kipling,  and  an  evening  that  is  not  wistful  is  not 
evening: 

But  evening  comes,  evening  with  its  magic,  and  we 
relinquish  ourselves  to  the  charm  once  more. 

About  our  brave  little  encampment,  about  the  rough 
horizon  where  all  danger  seems  at  present  asleep,  the 


174  AVOWALS 

twilight  sky  kindles  an  incomparable  rose  border,  orange, 
then  green;  and  then,  rising  by  degrees  to  the  zenith, 
it  softens  and  quenches.  It  is  the  indecisive  and  lovely 
hour,  when  amid  limpidities  which  are  neither  day  nor 
night  our  odorous  fires  begin  to  burn  clearly,  sending  up 
their  white  smoke  to  the  first  stars;  our  camels,  relieved 
of  their  burdens  and  their  high  saddles,  sweep  by  the  thin 
bushes,  browsing  on  perfumed  branches,  like  great  fan- 
tastic sheep,  of  slow  inoffensive  demeanour.  It  is  the 
hour  when  our  Bedouins  sit  in  a  circle  to  tell  stories  and 
sing;  the  hour  of  rest,  and  the  hour  of  dream,  the  delicious 
hour  of  nomadic  life. 

The  Bedouins  and  camels  tell  us  that  the  evening  Loti 
is  describing  is  an  Eastern  evening,  but  even  these  two 
touches  of  local  colour,  which  were  unavoidable,  add 
nothing  to  the  beauty  of  the  passage :  suppress  them,  turn 
the  Bedouins  into  gipsies  and  the  camels  into  horses, 
and  it  would  be  impossible  to  say  whether  the  evening 
described  had  happened  in  England  or  Japan.  Loti's 
intention  was  to  describe  something  that  is  eternal  in 
the  heart  of  man,  something  that  he  has  known  always, 
that  he  knew  ten  thousand  years  before  Nineveh  and  that 
he  will  know  ten  thousand  years  hence.  Mr  Kipling's 
intention  is  more  ethnological  than  poetic.  We  learn 
from  it  that  the  parakeets  and  doves  come  home  to  the 
woods  in  the  evening,  we  learn  that  the  sun  turns  the 
faces  and  the  bullocks'  horns  red  as  blood,  and  a  variety 
of  other  things.  From  Loti's  description  we  have  learned 
nothing,  but  we  have  been  moved,  as  we  are  moved  when 
we  look  at  a  portrait  by  Rembrandt.  Not  for  a  moment 
must  it  be  thought  that  I  compare  Loti  with  Rembrandt. 
Loti  is  a  painter  in  water  colours,  his  sentences  flow  fragile 
and  transparent  like  flower  blooms;  but  Rembrandt's 
intention  and  Loti's  intention  is  the  same — the  intention 
is  to  interest  us  in  things  that  always  have  been  and 


AVOWALS  175 

always  will  be.  But  I  envy  Mr  Kipling  his  copious  and 
sonorous  vocabulary,  especially  his  neologisms;  he  writes 
with  the  whole  language,  with  the  language  of  the  Bible, 
and  with  the  language  of  the  streets.  He  can  do  this, 
for  he  possesses  the  inkpot  which  turns  the  vilest  tin 
idiom  into  gold.  Last  night,  his  description  of  the  hills 
was  for  me  a  cup  of  mixed  admiration  and  misery,  and  I 
reaffirm  my  belief  that  no  one  tainted  with  journalism  has 
written  in  a  language  more  like  the  English  language, 
and  we  take  pleasure  in  noting  that,  unlike  every  other 
journalist,  he  refrains  from  French  words: 

They  crossed  a  snowy  pass  in  cold  moonlight,  when  the 
Lama,  mildly  chaffing  Kim,  went  through  up  to  his  knees, 
like  a  Bactrian  camel — the  snow-bred,  shag-haired  sort 
that  come  into  the  Kashmir  Serai.  They  dipped  across 
beds  of  light  snow  and  snow-powdered  shale,  where  they 
took  refuge  from  a  gale  in  a  camp  of  Tibetans  hurrying 
down  tiny  sheep,  each  laden  with  a  bag  of  borax.  They 
came  out  upon  grassy  shoulders  still  snow-speckled,  and 
through  forest,  to  grass  anew.  For  all  their  marchings, 
Kedarnath  and  Badrinath  were  not  impressed;  and  it  was 
only  after  days  of  travel  that  Kim,  uplifted  upon  some 
insignificant  ten-thousand-foot  hummock,  could  see  that 
a  shoulder-knot  or  horn  of  the  great  lords  had — ever  so 
slightly — changed  outline. 

At  last  they  entered  a  world  within  a  world — a  valley 
of  leagues  where  the  high  hills  were  fashioned  of  the 
mere  rubble  and  refuse  from  off  the  knees  of  the  moun- 
tain. Here  one  day's  march  carried  them  no  farther,  it 
seemed,  than  a  dreamer's  clogged  pace  bears  him  in  a 
nightmare.  They  skirted  a  shoulder  painfully  for  hours, 
and,  behold,  it  was  but  an  outlying  boss  in  an  outlying 
buttress  of  the  main  pile!  A  rounded  meadow  revealed 
itself,  when  they  had  reached  it,  for  a  vast  tableland 


176  AVOWALS 

running  far  into  the  valley.  Three  days  later,  it  was  a 
dim  fold  in  the  earth  to  southward. 

Surely  the  Gods  live  here,  said  Kim,  beaten  down  by 
the  silence  and  the  appalling  sweep  and  dispersal  of  the 
cloud-shadows  after  rain.     This  is  no  place  for  men! 

Long  and  long  ago,  said  the  Lama,  as  to  himself,  it  was 
asked  of  the  Lord  whether  the  world  were  everlasting. 
To  this  the  Excellent  One  returned  no  answer.  .  .  .  When 
I  was  in  Ceylon,  a  wise  seeker  confirmed  that  from  the 
gospel  which  is  written  in  Pali.  Certainly  since  we  know 
the  way  to  Freedom,  the  question  were  unprofitable,  but 
— look,  and  know  illusion,  chelal  These  are  the  true  hills! 
They  are  like  my  hills  by  Suchzen.  Never  were  such 
hills! 

Above  them,  still  enormously  above  them,  earth  towered 
away  towards  the  snow-line,  where  from  east  to  west, 
across  hundreds  of  miles,  ruled  as  with  a  ruler,  the  last 
of  the  bold  birches  stopped.  Above  that,  in  scarps  and 
block  upheaved,  the  rocks  strove  to  fight  their  heads 
above  the  white  smother.  Above  these  again,  changeless 
since  the  world's  beginning,  but  changing  to  every  mood 
of  sun  and  cloud,  lay  out  the  eternal  snow.  They  could 
see  blots  and  blurs  on  its  face,  where  storm  and  wandering 
mullie-ma  got  up  to  dance.  Below  them,  as  they  stood, 
the  forest  slid  away  in  a  sheet  of  blue-green,  for  mile  upon 
mile;  below  the  forest  was  a  village  in  its  sprinkle  of 
terraced  fields  and  steep  grazing-grounds;  below  the 
village  they  knew,  though  a  thunderstorm  growled  and 
worried  there  for  a  moment,  a  pitch  of  twelve  or  fifteen 
hundred  feet  gave  to  the  moist  valley  where  the  streams 
gather  that  are  the  mothers  of  young  Sutluj. 

A  miserable  midnight  is  often  succeeded  by  a  sunny 
morning,  and  it  was  a  relief  to  awake  forgetful  of  what  I 
had  read  overnight.  Envy!  Of  course!  We're  envious 
because  we  admire;    the  lay  reader  neither  admires  nor 


AVOWALS  177 

envies — art  is  for  the  artists.  And  I  was  glad  to  awake 
forgetful  of  Mr  Kipling,  thinking  of  Pierre  Loti,  of  a  book 
I  had  not  seen  for  months.  On  looking  into  Kim  again 
I  found  pages  of  dialogue,  magnificently  wrought,  hard 
and  breathless;  a  hardware  shop  with  iron  tulips  hanging 
from  the  rafters  and  brass  forget-me-nots  on  the  counter. 
Loti  is  never  hard.  His  attitude  towards  life  is  that  of  a 
child,  of  a  blond  ringleted  child  with  bright  blue  eyes 
and  hands  full  of  flower  blooms,  and  a  sensibility  like  that 
of  a  perverse  child  impelled  to  caresses.  The  description 
I  remembered  was  a  description  of  a  wet  evening  on 
Mount  Sinai,  a  few  simple  lines,  simple  as  a  tune  played 
on  a  shepherd's  pipe,  not  the  pipe  of  a  real  shepherd,  but 
on  a  silver  flute.  Listen  to  Loti's  sweet  piping  and  forget 
the  regimental  band,  whose  last  echoes  are  dying  in  the 
twilight: 

Marching  all  the  morning  through  interminable  valleys 
that  are  alike,  walled  with  red  granite,  ascending  by  slight 
inclines  towards  the  great  Sinai  where  we  shall  be  to- 
morrow. They  grow  larger,  the  valleys,  and  the  moun- 
tains rise  higher;  everything  becomes  grander  amid  chang- 
ing and  sombre  clouds;  over  yonder,  in  front  of  us, 
through  gigantic  and  opening  bays  of  stone,  we  begin  to 
see  still  higher  peaks  with  white  snows  shining  against 
the  darkness  of  the  sky.  An  icy  wind  arises,  blowing 
towards  us  from  the  buttresses  of  Sinai;  it  drowns  us  in 
a  smiting  rain  of  melting  snow  and  hail;  our  camels  scream 
and  tremble  with  cold;  our  light  clothes  of  white  wool, 
our  thin  Arab  slippers,  everything  is  soon  saturated  with 
flowing  water;  and  ourselves  are  trembling,  our  teeth 
clenched,  our  hands  suffering  and  inert,  mortally  be- 
numbed. 

Soon  after,  the  caravan  arrives  at  Sinai,  and  several 
days  are  spent  in  a  monastery  fifteen  hundred  years  old, 


178  AVOWALS 

whose  cedar  doors  are  a  thousand  years.  Loti  mentions 
that  the  monks  have  finished  saying  their  prayers,  but 
their  prayers  have  no  concern  for  him;  he  is  not  suffi- 
ciently interested  in  them  to  meditate  upon  their  wis- 
dom or  their  folly  in  living  their  lives  amid  the  rocks  of 
Sinai;  he  is  more  interested  in  the  age  of  the  doors,  and 
of  the  chests,  and  of  the  tapestries,  and  the  many  old 
things  they  show  him,  and  he  bids  the  monks  good-bye, 
somewhat  amused  by  the  fact  that  this  good-bye  is  for 
eternity.  It  was  part  of  Loti's  genius  to  look  upon  the 
individual  as  passing,  hardly  worthy  of  notice;  and  this  is 
why  Zola  said  to  me,  the  evening  that  the  news  came  in 
that  the  Academy  had  elected  Loti,  that  there  was  no 
humanity  in  Loti.  I  did  not  understand  what  Zola  meant 
at  the  time,  for  I  had  not  read  Loti;  now  I  understand 
how  Zola  was  deceived.  Zola  looked  upon  habits  and 
customs  as  humanity,  and  there  are  no  habits  and  customs 
in  Loti.  What  is  admirable  in  Loti,  what  gives  him  his 
originality,  is  his  indifference  to  the  individual.  He  leads 
us  away  from  our  individual  troubles,  and  interests  us  in 
the  vast  mysterious  sky,  and  the  rocks;  man  has  travelled 
the  desert  with  his  camels  for  ever  and  ever,  that  is  to 
say  since  Abraham 

Behind  us  the  scarps  of  granite  have  become  black 
screens,  wrought  and  strangely  carven  against  a  starry 
sky — and  placed  there  like  the  wild  seal  of  Islam,  the 
thin  crescent  of  an  Oriental  moon,  its  two  horns  in  the 
air. 

Wandering,  for  ever  wandering  through  silvery  morn- 
ings, dazzling  afternoons,  and  rose-coloured  evenings, 
then  resting  under  the  moon,  the  burden  of  centuries 
fallen  from  our  shoulders,  universal  education,  bimet- 
allism, free  trade,  electric  light,  and  wood  paving,  all 
our  ideas  fallen,  and  we  nomads  again,  wandering,  for 
ever  wandering. 


AVOWALS  179 

Next  day  we  enter  an  oasis,  a  little  circle  of  life  created 
by  a  spring  amid  the  rocks,  and  rest  there;  and  we  resume 
our  journey,  wandering,  for  ever  wandering  under  an 
immense  sky,  and  Loti  noticing  every  change  in  it,  pink 
and  mauve  and  grey,  delicate  harmonies  played  on  lute 
and  lyre,  with  a  flute  singing  pale  turquoise  blue.  Some 
brass  instruments  are  added  to  the  orchestra;  the  bassoon 
tells  of  the  great  blue  gulf  above,  and  the  trombone  of 
the  great  blue  gulf  on  the  right,  a  great  gulf  of  Prussian 
blue  describing  a  curve — the  Sea  of  Akabah.  The  sheikh 
rides  up  to  Loti  and  asks  him  if  he  will  ride  his  dromedary, 
which  he  says  is  swifter  than  the  one  Loti  is  riding,  and 
they  trot  on  side  by  side.  A  bird  follows,  flying  in  the 
shadow  of  the  dromedary,  and  at  night-time  it  seeks 
shelter  in  Loti's  tent.  These  are  the  events.  Someone 
shoots  a  nightjar;  it  was  beautiful  when  it  was  flying, 
but  an  uninteresting  lump  of  feathers  when  it  was  dead; 
and  the  female  comes  crying  round  the  camp  seeking  its 
lost  mate.  And  we  are  delighted  when  the  caravan  enters 
Palestine.  For  there  is  a  change  in  the  air;  it  is  no  longer 
the  hard,  dry  air  that  passes  unbreathed  over  a  world 
without  life  of  stones  and  sand.  And  with  little  greedy 
grunts  of  satisfaction  the  camels  swing  their  long  necks 
from  side  to  side,  snatching  ears  of  corn.  I  shall  always 
remember  the  last  salutes  when  the  Arabs  leave  Loti, 
returning  to  the  desert  where  they  were  born,  and  where 
they  like  to  live.  Soft  as  the  sound  of  a  flute  in  the 
distance  the  words  go  by.  One  writer  blows  his  pipe 
on  the  hill-side,  the  other  blares  like  a  military  band;  all 
brass  and  reed  instruments  are  included  in  this  band. 
Mr  Kipling's  prose  goes  to  a  marching  rhythm,  the 
trumpet's  blare  and  the  fife's  shriek;  there  is  the  bass 
clarionet  and  the  great  tuba  that  emits  a  sound  like 
the  earth  quaking  fathoms  deep,  or  the  cook  shovelling 
coal  in  the  coal-cellar.  The  band  is  playing  variations; 
but  variations  on  what  theme?    The  theme  will  appear 


180  AVOWALS 

presently.  .  .  .  Listen!  There  is  the  theme,  the  shoddy 
tune  of  the  average  man:  I  know  a  trick  worth  two  of 
that. 


CHAPTER  9. 

IT  is  related  in  a  book  entitled  Confessions  of  a  Young 
Man  that  I  returned  home  from  France  a  little  forgetful 
of  England  and  her  literature,  a  little  estranged,  and  that 
while  writing  a  novel  in  a  Western  country  it  came  upon 
me  to  doubt  if  beautiful  prose  could  be  written  in  English; 
a  sufficiently  alarming  discovery  for  me,  if  it  were  one, 
for  I  had  abandoned  my  one-time  project  of  learning 
French;  and  to  this  confession  I  might  have  added 
that,  possessed  of  a  great  fear  lest  I  should  miss  in  the 
English  language  an  instrument  that  would  secure  to  me 
the  fulfilment  of  my  dreams,  I  ransacked  my  grandfather's 
library  for  evidence  that  the  English  language  was  still 
a  literary  potentiality;  but  not  happening  upon  Sterne's 
Sentimental  Journey,  which  might  have  reassured  me,  I 
sent  to  London  for  a  new  work  by  Walter  Pater  which 
was  then  being  announced  (I  had  heard  of  Pater  as  a 
writer  of  beautiful  books),  and  waited,  clinging  to  the 
hope  that  I  had  heard  truly,  till  Marius  rescued  me  from 
my  dejection. 

The  first  paragraph  of  the  newly  arrived  book  predicted 
something  that  France  had  not  revealed  to  me,  and  when 
that  wonderful  second  chapter  entitled  White  Nights 
was  reached  I  sat  thinking,  a  little  overcome,  reproaching 
myself  for  not  having  thought  of  the  unaffected  joys  of 
the  heart,  the  colour  of  the  great  air  about  the  yellowing 
marbles  of  the  Roman  Villa,  or  that  by  helping  one's 
mother  with  her  white  and  purple  wools,  and  caring  for 
her  musical  instruments  it  was  possible  to  win  from  the 
handling  of  such  things  an  urbane  and  feminine  refine- 


AVOWALS  181 

ment;  or  that  by  avoiding  all  that  leads  into  desire  and 
is  evidently  ugly,  we  can  make  sure  of  a  temporal  life 
sufficiently  stable  and  sufficient  for  the  soul.  No,  I  had 
not  thought  of  all  that. 

A  very  trivial  appreciation  of  Marius  the  Epicurean  this 
will  seem  to  Pater's  twentieth-century  readers:  for  few 
readers  have  the  historical  sense,  and  the  truth  will  be 
overlooked  that  a  young  man  without  education,  except 
what  he  picked  up  in  a  French  cafe,  could  apprehend 
only  the  beauty  of  a  great  work  of  art  in  some  external 
aspects.  But  if  my  appreciations  were  superficial,  they 
were  intense,  and  I  cannot  tell  now  how  it  was  that  I  did 
not  take  the  train  to  Dublin  and  the  boat  to  England  and 
seek  the  author  out  wherever  he  had  hidden  himself,  and 
thank  him,  my  two  hands  extended,  for  the  great  benefit 
his  book  had  been  to  me.  It  had  lifted  a  great  mood  of 
dejection  from  me,  and  I  went  about  the  fields  saying  to 
myself:  the  English  language  is  still  alive,  Pater  has 
raised  it  from  the  dead.  And  if  I  did  not  write  to  tell  him 
of  the  great  benefit  he  had  conferred  upon  art,  it  was  for 
shame  of  my  poor  English,  fear  that  some  Gallicism  or 
blunder  would  betray  me  to  the  master  as  one  that  was 
not  worthy  of  apostleship.  It  must  have  been  thus,  for 
I  have  recollections  that  the  moment  I  drew  a  sheet  of 
paper  towards  me  to  write  about  this  book  the  pen  stopped 
and  my  thoughts  began  to  stray  through  the  story  Pater 
related  of  young  Marius's  ideas  and  sensations,  a  modern 
story,  inasmuch  as  it  was  a  human  one.  Our  human  na- 
ture does  not  change  in  essentials;  and  at  every  page  this 
story  seemed  to  have  been  written  for  me,  and  at  moments 
it  seemed  as  if  Pater  had  divined  not  only  my  existence 
but  even  the  very  circumstance  of  my  life,  for  Marius 
lived  in  an  old  family  mansion,  one  which  he  was  soon  to 
leave  to  go  to  Rome,  drawn  thither  by  literature — a 
literary  career  having  become  a  necessity  through  the 
extravagance  of  an  ancestor;  and  my  house,  a  Georgian 


182  AVOWALS 

mansion,  standing  on  a  hill-top,  amid  branching  woods, 
was  also  neglected;  like  Marius's  house  it  had  fallen  into 
the  lag  end  of  its  fortunes;  and  while  wandering  round 
the  ruined  stables  in  which  had  stood  a  hundred  horses, 
and  through  the  abandoned  gardens  on  whose  high  wall 
a  peacock,  the  last  of  a  long  race,  screamed  for  a  mate, 
I  remembered  that  my  own  life  was  to  live  with  my 
widowed  mother,  leaving  her  every  spring  for  London 
just  before  the  beech  woods  begin  to  swell  into  pink  buds. 
And  it  was  in  the  year  that  I  went  to  Moore  Hall  to 
write  Muslin  that  I  read  Marius  the  Epicurean.  Yes,  it 
must  have  been  in  1885,  so  long  did  the  springtime  seem 
to  me  coming,  and  I  weary  of  waiting  for  it,  my  thoughts 
away  in  London  where  men  and  women  were  reading 
and  talking  about  Marius.  Even  the  day  rises  up  in 
my  memory  when  I  walked  with  mother  on  the  windy 
lawn  facing  the  grey  lake,  remarking  to  her  that  the 
spring  was  later  that  year  than  I  had  ever  known  it 
before.  You  promised  to  stay  with  me,  George,  till 
the  leaves  came,  and  you  know  they  do  not  come  until 
May.  My  thoughts  are  set,  mother,  on  Kensington,  on 
Earl's  Terrace,  whither  the  Robinsons  have  gone  from 
Gower  Street  to  live,  for  it  will  be  there  I  shall  hear 
an  interesting  appreciation  of  Marius  the  Epicurean.  Only 
in  Earl's  Terrace  can  I  learn  how  the  book  has  been  re- 
ceived in  London.  What  matter  to  you,  George,  how 
the  book  has  been  received  in  London,  since  you  like  it? 
You're  always  asking  people  for  their  opinions,  but  I 
don't  think  you  ever  take  them.  We  do  not  borrow 
people's  opinions,  we  assimilate  them,  I  answered,  and  fell 
to  thinking  that  my  curiosity  to  hear  what  people  were 
saying  about  Marius  was  not  caused  by  lack  of  confidence 
in  my  judgment;  my  instinct,  for  it  was  one,  would  not 
allow  me  to  think  else  than  that  Pater  had  added  an 
immortal  prose  masterpiece  to  the  English  language; 
though  all  the  world  said  nay  I  should  answer:  pooh.    My 


AVOWALS  183 

mind  was  itching  to  cry  out  in  the  Robinsons'  drawing- 
room  :  Pater  has  added  a  prose  work  to  English  literature, 
a  thing  that  English  literature  stands  in  need  of.  I  shall 
affirm  this,  I  said  to  myself,  with  Pauline  accent,  and 
Mary  Robinson  will  answer  something  unexpected, 
picturesque,  altogether  out  of  the  common.  But  nothing 
falls  out  exactly  as  we  expect  it,  and  two  months  later,  in 
May,  Mary  seemed  to  me  almost  aloof,  getting  into  corners 
as  if  unwilling  to  enter  into  serious  conversation.  Her 
sister  Mabel,  on  whose  judgment  I  reposed  much  trust, 
distressed  me  with  remarks  regarding  what  she  termed 
Pater's  mannerisms,  saying  they  were  too  marked  for  a 
great  work  of  art,  and  you're  putting  it  forward  as  one 
of  the  greatest  ever  written.  I'm  afraid  that  what  you 
regard  as  mannerisms  I  regard  as  the  great  craft  necessary 
for  the  conveyance  of  the  subject.  Without  what  you 
term  the  blandness,  you  would  have  had  the  subject  with- 
out texture,  and  a  book  without  texture 

New  visitors  were  announced,  and  the  conversation 
about  Pater  had  to  cease,  but  as  soon  as  the  odds  and 
oddments  left  (odds  and  oddments  collected  even  at  the 
Robinsons')  Mary  led  the  conversation  back  whence  it 
had  started,  and  Mabel  compared  Pater  to  Renan,  a 
comparison  that  did  not  seem  to  annoy  her  sister  as  it 
should  have  done,  Mary's  thoughts  being  at  that  time 
away  in  France.  And  I  could  make  no  sufficient  answer, 
not  having  read  Renan;  the  best  I  could  do  was  to  inter- 
pose that  a  French  writer  comes  to  us  in  the  investiture 
of  a  language  that  we  only  half  understand.  If  the  con- 
versation occurred  to-day  I  should  answer:  a  writer 
whom  I  admire  for  his  lucidity  and  power  of  exposition, 
whilst  disliking  the  ecclesiastical  sleekness  with  which  he 
raises  Jesus  out  of  godhead,  a  stupid  third-century  inven- 
tion, no  more  than  that.  And  once  more  the  conversation 
slipped  away  from  Pater.  Vernon  Lee's  book,  Euphorion, 
had  just  been  published,  and  Mary  was  anxious  to  speak 


184  AVOWALS 

about  it,  which  was  tiresome.  But  to  be  just,  Vernon  Lee 
did  not  try  to  prolong  the  conversation;  like  myself, 
she  was  more  interested  in  Marius  than  in  anything,  and 
it  was  she  who  led  the  conversation  back  to  him,  and  was 
speaking  with  extraordinary  eloquence  regarding  his  use 
of  words,  when  we  were  again  interrupted.  This  time  the 
visitor  was  Henry  James. 

A  flutter  of  feminine  attention  began  at  once  about  the 
important  American,  and  while  he  talked  in  his  pompous 
but  not  unfriendly  manner,  addressing  his  conversation 
by  turns  to  Mary  and  Mabel  Robinson,  a  little  careless,  I 
thought,  of  the  attentions  of  Vernon  Lee  and  her  admira- 
tions of  his  style,  I  was  left  to  my  meditations,  and  these 
began  in  a  recollection  of  Henry  James's  size,  which 
seemed  to  have  enlarged  since  I  last  saw  him — a  man  of 
great  bulk  and  such  remoteness  that  one  did  not  associate 
him  with  The  Portrait  of  a  Lady.  He  did  not  carry  my 
thoughts  towards  a  man  who  had  known  women  at  first 
hand  and  intimately,  but  one  who  had  watched  them 
with  literary  rather  than  personal  interest.  And  these 
thoughts  drew  my  eyes  to  the  round  head,  already  going 
bald,  to  the  small  dark  eyes  closely  set,  and  to  the  great 
expanse  of  closely  shaven  face.  His  legs  were  short,  and 
his  hands  and  feet  large;  and  he  sat  portentously  in  his 
chair,  speaking  with  some  hesitation  and  great  care, 
anxious  that  every  sentence,  or  if  not  all,  at  least  every 
third  or  fourth,  should  send  forth  a  beam  of  humour.  I 
had  met  him  at  the  Robinsons'  some  two  years  before,  and 
was,  of  course,  much  impressed,  for  he  was  the  first 
English  writer  I  knew  whom  I  could  look  upon  as  an 
artist.  We  had  had  some  conversation  at  the  Robinsons', 
and  it  is  my  belief  that  I  left  their  house  with  him,  or  it 
may  have  been  my  good  fortune  to  have  overtaken  him 
on  his  way  to  the  Kensington  railway  station.  Be  this 
as  it  may,  we  travelled  some  distance  together,  and  he 
told  me  to  look  out  for  an  article  by  him  on  the  art  of 


AVOWALS  185 

fiction  in  Longman's  Magazine.  It  will  appear,  he  said, 
next  month,  and  might  be  considered  in  some  respects  to 
be  a  partial  answer  to  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  and  to 
Andrew  Lang,  who  had  been  contributing  to  this  maga- 
zine, articles  on  the  art  of  fiction.  I  listened  to  him,  hoping 
for  an  opportunity  to  relate  the  subject  of  A  Modern  Lover, 
which  I  was  then  writing;  the  chance  came,  and  my 
narrative  was  successful;  a  change  of  expression  that  I 
recognised  as  one  of  envy  passed  over  the  vast  face,  a 
change  of  expression  that  seemed  to  admit  at  least  that 
he  thought  the  subject  would  have  suited  him  very  well. 
It  was  after  the  publication  of  this  book  that  I  retired  to 
Moore  Hall  to  begin  A  Mummer's  Wife,  and  when  that 
book  was  published  a  controversy  began  about  its  morality 
in  The  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  and  to  secure  Henry  James's 
advocacy,  I  sent  him  the  article  I  had  contributed  on  the 
subject  and  the  book.  A  few  weeks  later  a  long  letter 
came  from  him,  a  letter  that  would  have  embellished 
these  pages  if  I  possessed  it,  but  only  a  few  stray  memories 
of  it  remain.  He  said,  and  he  said  truly,  that  the  book 
seemed  to  him  to  have  been  thought  in  French  and 
inadequately  translated;  and  I  remember  too  that  he 
expressed  an  opinion  regarding  its  length,  which  he 
recognised  as  disproportionate  to  the  matter  related,  a 
pronouncement  which  sent  my  thoughts  flying  back  to 
the  time  long  ago  when  Henry  James's  name  first  broke 
upon  my  ears  in  the  Avenue  du  Bois  de  Boulogne,  to  the 
lady  who  lent  me  Daisy  Miller,  Four  Meetings,  Madame  de 
Mauve,  A  Passionate  Pilgrim,  and  a  host  of  other  stories, 
Roderick  Hudson  among  them,  all  of  which,  with  a  story 
entitled  The  Madonna  of  the  Future,  revealed  to  me  a 
refined  and  accomplished  writer,  possessed  of  a  style  that 
he  must  have  brought  into  the  world  with  him,  for  it  had 
already  borne  a  number  of  volumes.  We  should  seek 
English  literature  vainly  for  a  more  beautiful  description 
of  Raphael's  Madonna,  than  his  Virgin  of  the  Chair ;  and 


186  AVOWALS 

even  at  that  time  I  foresaw  in  him  a  writer  who  could 
apply  Gautier's  celebrated  phrase  to  himself:  To  me  the 
visible  world  is  visible.  He  might  have  added :  to  me  the 
invisible  world  is  even  more  invisible  than  it  was  to 
Gautier.  The  addition  might  not  be  in  keeping  with  his 
conception  of  himself,  I  said,  and  turned  to  his  letter 
again.  It  contained  hints  of  psychological  ambitions  that 
interested  me,  but  consideration  of  these  was  interrupted 
by  a  great  curiosity  to  learn  why  The  Portrait  of  a  Lady 
was  not  too  long,  though  it  contained  more  text  than 
A  Mummer's  Wife,  and  much  less  subject  matter,  and 
while  gazing  between  the  islands  across  the  grey  lake  I 
fell  to  thinking  what  sort  of  answer  he  would  make  to 
the  letter  that  had  gone  to  the  post. 

His  difficult  writing  appeared  again  in  a  few  days,  and  it 
began  with  an  admission  that  The  Portrait  of  a  Lady  was 
much  too  long.  A  delightful  admission  truly,  but  one 
that  he  spoilt  by  a  qualification,  for  he  said  that  the  woman 
in  The  Portrait  of  a  Lady  represented  a  higher  intellectual 
plane  than  Kate  Ede,  and  proceeded  to  draw  from  the 
alleged  fact  the  conclusion  that  she  lived  an  intenser  life 
than  the  workwoman.  He  said,  too,  that  he  gathered 
from  my  book  that  Kate  Ede's  intelligence  was  not  part 
of  the  subject  as  I  conceived  it,  which,  of  course,  was 
true,  her  emotions  and  instincts  having  seemed  to  me 
enough.  And  so  the  question  came  how  a  clever  man  could 
deceive  himself  so  thoroughly.  For  what  are  his  lady 
and  the  group  of  people  that  surround  her,  I  said,  but 
idle,  passionless  Americans  wandering  over  Europe  in 
search  of  amusement,  not  even  amusement,  distraction. 
A  husband  who  collects  cameos;  an  American  friend 
whose  occupation  is  to  keep  his  hands  in  his  pockets,  and 
a  lady  who  vainly  struggles  with  perjured  washerwomen 
— perjured  washerwomen!  How  a  man's  adjective 
betrays  his  ambitions.  And  to  this  group  comes  a  lover 
who,  after  a  long  siege,  kisses  the  lady;  the  kiss  is  one  of 


AVOWALS  187 

the  worst  in  literature,  proclaiming  the  fact  that  Henry 
James  knows  very  little  about  kissing,  and  that  it  does 
not  interest  him.  The  lady  breaks  away;  and  next  day 
the  lover  calls  on  her,  but  he  only  meets  her  friend,  and  is 
told  that  she  has  gone  to  Rome.  Was  there  ever  in  this 
world  so  bloodless  and  ineffectual  a  conclusion?  Yet,  I 
said,  he  writes  to  me  about  psychology,  mistaking,  I 
could  not  help  thinking,  trivial  comments  about  men 
and  women,  only  faintly  imagined,  for  psychology.  That 
which  is  firmly  and  clearly  imagined  needs  no  psychology. 
Hamlet  and  Don  Quixote  are  psychologies,  and  so  is  Dick 
Lennox,  though  a  long  way  off.  The  first  business  of 
the  writer  is  to  find  a  human  instinct;  it  is  as  necessary 
to  him  as  a  fox  is  to  the  fox-hunter;  and  Henry  James 
does  not  fulfil  the  first  conditions  of  the  chase;  as  well 
bring  out  a  pack  of  foxhounds  to  hunt  a  rat;  and  I  re- 
membered the  shadowy  souls  one  meets  in  his  books 
walking  up  and  down  terraces,  and  their  needless  struggles 
whether  they  should  offer  each  other  cigarettes  or  refrain. 
He  mistakes  detail  for  psychology,  I  continued,  and  going 
to  my  little  store  of  books  and  picking  out  The  Madonna 
of  the  Future,  I  read  the  tale  again,  letting  the  volume 
drop  on  my  knees  so  that  I  might  recall  the  original 
story,  Balzac's,  a  story  of  a  great  artist  who  had  painted 
many  beautiful  pictures,  and  who  closed  his  studio  to  all 
his  friends,  saying  he  was  engaged  upon  a  masterpiece. 
The  years  went  by,  leaving  the  masterpiece  unfinished; 
for  to  finish  it  a  certain  model  had  to  be  found,  and  he 
agreed  to  let  a  fellow-craftsmen  see  the  masterpiece 
if  Pourbus  brought  his  mistress  with  him,  she  being 
the  model  the  great  artist  had  sought  vainly  throughout 
Europe  and,  I  think,  Asia.  Pourbus  and  the  model 
pass  through  rooms  hung  with  beautiful  pictures  that 
have  lost  all  interest  for  the  great  artist,  the  picture  that 
interests  him  is  one  that  has  been  stippled  and  glazed 
and  repainted,  and  begun  again  so  often  that  of  the 


188  AVOWALS 

original  picture  only  one  beautifully  painted  foot  remains. 
In  Henry  James  the  artist  wastes  his  life  looking  at  an 
empty  canvas,  hardly  enough  to  justify  rewriting  Balzac, 
I  said,  and  sat  asking  myself  how  it  was  he  overlooked 
the  variation  that  might  have  justified  the  retelling  of 
the  story,  returning  to  my  first  idea  that  Henry  James 
lacked  the  psychological  sense  altogether,  at  least  as  I 
understood  it,  till  forgetful  of  the  presence  of  Mary 
and  Mabel  Robinson,  and  of  Vernon  Lee,  I  sought 
justification  for  the  heresy  in  a  memory  of  his  description 
of  Raphael's  Madonna,  one  to  which  Gautier  would  have 
taken  off  his  hat.  It  was  natural  to  recall  his  descriptions 
of  the  English  landscape  in  The  Passionate  Pilgrim,  and 
the  complete  breakdown  that  follows  when  the  psycho- 
logical situation  enters  in  the  person  of  the  owner  of  the 
house  and  property — an  early  story,  it  is  true,  but  a  man 
shows  what  he  is  going  to  do  the  moment  he  puts  pen  to 
paper,  or  brush  to  canvas.  Manet's  words  to  me,  and  he 
was  incontestably  a  man  of  genius. 

As  I  recalled  the  thoughts  that  Henry  James's  letter 
had  raised  in  my  mind  the  word  Pater  transported  me 
from  Moore  Hall  back  into  the  Kensington  drawing-room. 
Vernon  Lee  was  now  speaking  about  Pater's  infallible  use 
of  words,  and  I  said  to  myself:  Henry  James  will  find 
fault  with  Marius  for  reasons  analogous  to  those  he  gave 
for  preferring  the  lady  whose  portrait  he  painted  to  Kate 
Ede.  He  will  say  that  Marius  does  not  represent  life  as 
intensely  as  his  friend  Flavius,  and  that  Flavius,  therefore, 
should  have  been  the  hero  of  the  story.  But  he  had  not 
been  speaking  for  long  before  I  began  to  recognise  an 
extraordinarily  able  critic.  A  man,  I  murmured,  too 
analytic  for  creation,  finds  his  job  in  criticism;  and  prone 
though  I  was  then,  as  now,  to  resent  any  fault-finding  in 
Marius,  I  could  not  but  yield  to  his  challenge,  that 
although  the  whole  of  the  first  volume  is  given  over  to 
praise  of  Pagan  civilisation,  a  large  part  of  the  second  is 


AVOWALS  189 

turned  over  to  an  equal  admiration  of  Christianity.  And 
Henry  James's  point  was  that  we  cannot  admire  opposites 
equally.  Somebody,  very  likely  it  was  Vernon  Lee,  said 
that  an  artist  could  admire  a  Raphael  and  a  Rubens,  one 
as  much  as  the  other.  Henry  James  answered:  intellect- 
ually, perhaps,  as  craftsmen,  Raphael  and  Rubens  may  be 
admired  equally,  but  the  admirer  must,  if  he  tell  the 
truth,  admit  to  a  prepossession  in  favour  of  one  painter 
or  the  other.  He  may  think  The  Descent  from  the  Cross 
and  The  Transfiguration  great  pictures,  but  if  human 
nature  overrules  our  intellect  in  art,  he  continued,  causing 
a  bias  that  our  intellect  does  not  approve,  how  much  more 
potent  it  must  be  in  religion,  religion  being  dependent 
altogether  on  our  emotions  for  support.  How  well  he 
reasons,  I  said  to  myself,  and  lost  several  sentences,  for 
the  thought  was  still  in  my  mind  that  literature  had  lost 
an  excellent  critic.  It  may  have  been  a  minute  or  five  I 
was  away,  I  know  not,  but  when  I  heard  him  again  he 
was  telling  that  in  a  certain  chapter  towards  the  end  of 
the  second  volume  Pater  took  Christianity  under  his 
personal  wing,  diminishing  thereby  the  aesthetic  value  of 
his  work  and  unnecessarily,  for  in  the  next  chapter  he 
allows  us  to  see  the  power  that  Christian  ceremonial  exer- 
cises on  Marius.    His  words  are May  I  have  the  book, 

Miss  Robinson?  Mary  returned  with  the  book  and  James 
read:  What  has  been  on  the  whole  the  method  of  the 
Church  as  a  power  of  sweetness  and  patience  in  dealing 
with  matters  like  Pagan  art  was  already  manifest;  it  has 
the  character  of  the  divine  moderation  of  Christ  himself. 
Now  no  human  or  divine  being,  James  said,  laying  the 
book  aside,  was  ever  less  moderate  than  Christ  himself, 
and  it  is  hard  for  me  to  believe  that  Pater  read  the  Gospels 
so  carelessly  that  the  outbursts  escaped  his  notice.  But 
my  dear  Mr  Henry  James,  Pater  wishes  to  present  Jesus 
in  two  aspects.  It  seems  to  me,  Miss  Robinson,  the 
words  divine  moderation  present  him  in  one.    Pater  may 


190  AVOWALS 

hint  darkly  that  there  is  another  side,  but  he  keeps  that 
other  side  out  of  sight,  but  if  we  say  any  more  we  shall 
be  provoked  into  a  morass  of  Biblical  disputation;  so  I 
will  say  that  when  Miss  Vernon  Lee  spoke  as  she  did  just 
now  of  Renan,  I  understood  her  to  mean  that  Pater 
adopts  a  tone  as  conciliatory  as  Renan.  I  have  praised 
Pagan  civilisation,  but  you  shall  see  in  a  moment  how 
nicely  I  can  speak  about  Christian.  But  would  you  not 
have  had  him  speak  nicely  about  Christian  civilisation, 
Mr  James?  interposed  Mabel  Robinson,  who  held  fast  to 
Christianity  in  its  orthodox  forms;  and  thinking  that 
perhaps  Henry  James  had  said  enough,  Mary  Robinson 
broke  in  gaily:  I'm  afraid  Pater  will  not  come  in  to-day 
to  hear  us  talking  about  him.  But  does  Pater  come  here? 
I  said.  I  didn't  know  that  you  knew  him.  Yes;  he  used 
to  live  in  Oxford,  but  he  has  come  to  live  in  London  at 
Number  Seventeen  Earl's  Terrace,  only  three  doors  from 
here.  You're  sure  to  meet  him  this  week  or  the  week  after. 
The  reader  may  be  sure  that  I  did  not  fail  to  turn  into 
the  Robinsons'  on  the  next  at-home  day.  But  Pater 
did  not  come,  not  on  that  day  nor  on  the  following 
Tuesday.  But  one  day  Mary  said:  Pater  is  coming  to- 
day, he  told  me  so  this  morning;  you  won't  be  dis- 
appointed again.  And  again  I  waited,  talking  to  my 
friends  mechanically,  thinking  all  the  while  of  the  great 
moment  when  the  door  would  open  and  the  servant  would 
say :  Mr  Walter  Pater. 


CHAPTER  10. 

AFTER  that  day  I  often  went  to  his  house  to  be 
absorbed  in  its  soothing  greys:  a  quiet  harmony 
where  conversation  was  always  kind;  a  little  too  formal, 
perhaps,  for  my  taste.     He  lived  with  his  two  sisters, 


AVOWALS  191 

writing,  I  think,  in  a  room  above  the  drawing-room; 
one  heard  him  walking  to  and  fro,  for  his  tread  was  heavy, 
but  when  he  came  down  all  trace  of  literary  anxiety  had 
disappeared  from  his  face;  and  picking  up  the  thread  of  the 
conversation  that  his  sisters  and  I  were  dragging  to  and 
fro  he  continued  it,  each  sentence  carefully  poised,  many 
of  them  containing  the  words :  no  doubt. 

I  went  to  his  house  to  luncheon  and  to  dinner,  and  in  the 
afternoons  had  long  talks  with  him,  and  sometimes  we 
went  out  to  walk  together.  But  before  I  relate  our  friend- 
ship let  me  tell  how  Pater  appeared  to  me:  almost  as  one 
of  those  ugly  uncouth  figures  one  meets  with  at  the  end 
of  terraces,  in  lead  rather  than  in  stone,  with  large  over- 
arching skulls.  I  thought  of  the  poet  Verlaine,  and  while 
contrasting  the  disorder  of  the  poet's  jacket  with  the 
scrupulous  refinement  of  the  neck-tie  evocative  of  long 
minutes  of  careful  consideration,  I  pondered  on  the  great 
military  moustache  that  had  seemed  at  first  a  discrepancy, 
but  which  had  now  begun  to  seem  an  essential  part  of  him 
who  wished  above  all  things  to  preserve  his  real  self  for 
himself  and  to  present  to  the  world,  even  to  his  friends,  a 
carefully  prepared  aspect — a  mask.  The  beginning  of 
each  visit  was  always  a  little  frigid,  but  at  the  close  of  the 
third  Pater  proposed  we  should  go  for  a  walk,  and  it  was 
while  sitting  on  a  seat  in  Kensington  Gardens  in  the  Long 
Walk  that  I  noticed  the  yellow  dog-skin  gloves  that  he 
wore  punctiliously.  There  is  something  of  the  vicar  in 
Pater,  I  said,  a  vicar  who  has  got  somehow  mixed  up 
with  a  cavalryman,  and  immediately  after  this  thought 
crossed  my  mind  I  remembered  that  he  had  always 
appeared  to  me  as  an  ugly  man,  which  was  strange.  For 
whosoever  bears  a  great  intelligence  within  him  is  never 
ugly;  the  intelligence  illumines  and  informs,  real  ugliness 
is  found  only  in  small,  narrow,  arid  brows,  I  said,  and 
looked  up  with  the  intention  of  finding  justification  in  his 
features  for  my  belief  in  his  almost  fantastic  ugliness,  but 


192  AVOWALS 

none  was  apparent  in  them;  and  it  was  not  till  I  withdrew 
my  eyes  from  his  moveless  countenance  that  I  appre- 
hended the  cause — a  mask,  I  cried,  to  myself;  and  fell 
to  seeking  his  reasons  for  the  assumption  of  so  hideous  a 
disguise,  and  why  it  was  never  dropped,  not  once  during 
the  first  few  weeks  of  our  acquaintanceship. 

It  was  on  that  seat  in  the  Long  Walk  that  I  became 
aware  I  was  sitting  by  the  real  Pater,  and  it  was  on  that 
seat  in  the  Long  Walk  that  I  became  aware  that  I  was 
spying  on  Pater,  which  was  unavoidable,  for  knowing  how 
rich  and  varied  his  mind  was  in  his  writings  the  tempta- 
tion was  great  to  continue  his  friend,  waiting,  however 
difficult  the  waiting  might  be,  till  he  could  no  longer 
withhold  himself  aloof,  when,  out  of  sheer  weariness  he 
would  lay  aside  all  parade  of  courtesy  and  politeness — in 
other  words,  lay  aside  his  mask.  He  has,  as  I  have  said, 
lifted  so  many  veils  in  his  writings,  revealed  so  much,  that 
I  must  have  patience,  but  it  will  take  years;  even  so  I 
must  continue  to  spy  upon  him — the  word  spy  is  a  hard 
one,  but  I  like  hard  words.  The  word  seems  exaggerated, 
and  caused  a  little  shudder,  but  it  is  the  only  word  that 
depicts  the  situation  that  Pater's  shyness  placed  me  in. 

Moreover  the  artist  considers  nothing  but  his  art,  and  it 
behoved  me  to  understand  Pater,  but  despite  my  genius  for 
intimacy,  I  did  not  begin  to  feel  that  I  had  advanced 
myself  in  his  till  I  told  him  how  much  I  admired  a  certain 
paper,  almost  a  story,  in  which  a  child  recovering  from  a 
long  illness  takes  pleasure  in  listening  to  the  rustling  of  a 
flowering  branch  beyond  his  window.  The  title  of  your 
story  was  The  Child  in  the  House.  It  is  many  years  since 
I  read  it,  but  while  reading,  those  pages  were  my  world. 
In  his  quiet,  old-maidish  way  Pater  said :  I'm  glad  you  like 
that  paper,  and  as  some  of  it  seems  to  have  passed  out  of 
your  mind  I  will  give  you  a  proof,  I've  some  upstairs ;  and 
when  he  returned  with  the  proof  in  his  hand,  two  long 
strips  of  paper,  pulls  the  printer  would  have  called  them, 


AVOWALS  193 

it  seemed  to  me  that  a  favour  beyond  anything  I  had  ever 
hoped  to  receive  was  about  to  be  conferred  upon  me.  Nor 
was  I  altogether  wrong,  for  no  more  beautiful  thing  could 
be  put  into  anybody's  hands  than  that  story,  if  one 
could  call  it  a  story,  for  Pater,  knowing  himself  not  to 
be  altogether  a  story-teller,  never  plunged  into  story,  but 
remained  always  a  little  outside,  on  the  eve,  as  it  were,  and 
his  imaginary  portraits  gain  a  dim  subdued  beauty  from 
his  scrupulous  reverence  of  an  art  that  was  not  his  and 
which  he  did  not  wish  to  be  his,  preferring  to  glance  into 
life  and  to  dream  on  what  he  had  half  seen,  half  defined, 
rather  than  to  pry  and  to  take  notes.  And  looked  at  from 
this  side,  the  imaginary  portraits  are  intimations  of  life 
rather  than  life  as  it  seems  in  its  passing.  In  The  Prince 
of  Court  Painters  he  gives  us  a  soul  apart,  lighting  no  other 
soul,  lit  with  no  light  of  its  own,  and  visible  to  us  through 
borrowed  light:  Watteau  is  away  in  Paris,  and  Jean 
Baptiste's  sister  dreams  of  Watteau's  art  and  a  little  of  her 
brother's.  A  satellite  soul  truly,  as  was  Rembrandt's  wife, 
but  her  pilgrimage  was  in  person,  and  the  sorrow  we  read 
on  her  face  is  real  sorrow,  but  in  Pater's  portrait  of  Jean 
Baptiste's  sister,  only  an  illusive  regret  appears,  if  as  much. 
Jean  Baptiste's  sister  is  not  conscious  of  her  regret;  her 
sorrow,  if  it  be  one,  is  a  dim  radiance,  the  moon's  sorrow,  so 
to  speak.  So  I  was  thinking  one  evening  as  I  came  away 
from  the  Robinsons  already  absorbed  in  meditations,  for  it 
was  just  as  I  turned  out  of  Earl's  Terrace  into  the  High 
Street  that  I  met  Pater,  and  accosting  him  impulsively,  I 
said:  I've  been  reading  you  all  this  morning  and  talking 
about  my  reading  to  Mary,  for  you've  written  the  most 
beautiful  thing  ever  written.  Astonished  but  not  dis- 
pleased at  this  abrupt  interjection  of  myself  into  his  life, 
Pater  took  my  arm.  The  most  beautiful  thing,  I  con- 
tinued, and  began  to  tell  of  the  woman  who  loved  Watteau 
all  her  life  almost  without  knowing  it,  for  the  word  love 
is  not  pronounced  in  the  story,  till  my  store  of  words  were 


194  AVOWALS 

exhausted;  and  in  return  for  my  cordial  admiration  of 
The  Prince  of  Court  Painters  Pater  walked  a  little  way 
up  the  High  Street  with  me.  We  returned  to  Earl's 
Terrace  together,  and  it  was  at  the  opening  of  the  Terrace 
from  the  High  Street  that  I  said :  the  woman  in  your  story 
(Jean  Baptiste's  sister,  if  I  remember  right)  is  the  only 
one  in  English  fiction  that  I  recognise  as  a  woman  by  some- 
thing more  than  mere  external  signs,  beard,  moustache 
or  certain  roundnesses.  She  is  spiritually  a  woman,  the 
being  that  Rembrandt  painted.  Pater's  face  changed 
expression  and  I  saw  that  my  meaning  escaped  him.  But 
an  east  wind  was  blowing  at  the  time,  and  thinking  he 
might  prefer  to  go  indoors  than  to  listen  to  my  admiration 
of  his  writings  any  longer,  I  turned  towards  the  Kensing- 
ton railway  station,  but  had  not  gone  more  than  half-way 
when  an  overwhelming  temptation  seized  me  to  go  back 
and  make  plain  my  meaning.  For  some  time  I  stood 
irresolute,  unable  to  summon  courage  to  knock  at  the  door 
and  explain  to  the  servant  that  I  should  not  detain  Mr 
Pater  long,  but  had  something  of  great  importance  to 
tell  him.  It  will  seem  rather  silly,  I  murmured,  but  I 
could  not  do  else  than  retract  my  steps.  The  servant 
seemed  a  long  time  coming,  but  she  did  come  and  I  was 
shown  up  to  the  drawing-room.  Mr  Pater  will  be  down 
presently,   sir.     He  entered  the  drawing-room  a  little 

flurried.    My  dear  Moore,  what  is 

I've  come  back  for  no  better  purpose  than  to  tell  you 
why  your  portrait  of  Jean  Baptiste's  sister  is  like  Rem- 
brandt's portrait  of  his  wife.  Your  face  told  me  you  did 
not  understand  me,  and  as  it  is  important  to  me  not  to 
seem  a  fool  in  your  eyes  I  came  back.  My  dear  Moore! 
He  put  his  hand  upon  my  shoulder,  and  the  mask  dropped 
a  little.  In  my  opinion,  I  continued,  it  was  Rembrandt 
who  introduced  women  into  art.  But  the  Renaissance? 
said  Pater.  The  Renaissance,  I  answered,  understood 
women  as  odalisques,  mere  instruments  of  pleasure;   and 


AVOWALS  195 

Durer  caricatured  women,  but  it  was  Rembrandt  who 
first  saw  woman  as  man's  satellite,  pale  and  pensive,  aware 
that  man  and  not  woman  had  created  the  world ;  and  when 
he  was  inspired  he  painted  them  a  little  saddened  by 
the  knowledge,  but  kindly  disposed  withal.  But  do  not 
think,  Pater,  that  I  wish  to  depreciate  women  or  their 
influence  in  life.  Few  men  have  admired  women  more 
than  I  have.  A  very  gracious  woman  once  said  in  my  pre- 
sence: Trust  G.  M.  to  find  something  to  say  in  favour  of  a 
woman,  whatever  her  faults  may  be.  All  things  certainly 
I  would  say  in  favour  of  women,  and  all  things  do  for  a 
woman,  all  but  one,  I  would  not  lie  for  a  woman;  and 
however  needful  they  are  in  our  lives,  and  however 
delightful  their  influence  is,  still  a  woman  is  a  satellite 
and  it  is  to  her  honour  that  she  is  not  ashamed  to  be 
one,  no  more  ashamed  is  she  than  the  moon;  only  man  is 
ashamed — in  other  words,  only  a  man  is  Christian. 

Women  have  done  some  very  pretty  painting  and 
written  some  delightful  poems,  but  if  we  look  into  their 
faces  we  read  there  the  sadness  of  the  satellite;  and 
this  sadness  Rembrandt  painted  in  1660  or  thereabouts, 
but  nobody  has  written  it.  Balzac,  who  read  nature  from 
end  to  end?  But  he  did  not  realize  it — not  altogether  in 
any  work  that  I  can  remember  at  the  moment.  Not  as  you 
have  done.  And  it  was  your  genius  that  led  you  to  place 
her  in  the  town  of  Lille  or  Valenciennes,  near  to  the 
country  of  Rembrandt.  Or  was  it  that  Watteau  came 
from  some  frontier  town — which?  It  doesn't  matter,  Lille 
and  Valenciennes  are  frontier  towns,  and  there  she  is  in 
one  or  the  other,  dreaming  of  Watteau's  art,  the  only  real 
woman  in  English  literature.  All  you  say,  Moore,  is  very 
kind,  and  although  your  point  of  view  escaped  me  in  the 
High  Street — a  wind  was  blowing  at  the  time,  a  keen  wind, 
and  I  was  in  a  hurry  to  get  home — I  do  apprehend  your 
meaning,  and  would  like  to  ask  you  a  question:  Have  I 
done  in  any  other  work  of  the  kind  that  you  perceive  in 


196  AVOWALS 

The  Prince  of  Court  Painters?  Of  course  you  have,  Pater, 
the  same  art  is  in  Marius.  Pater's  face  changed  a  little, 
and  I  said  to  myself :  he  thinks  that  I  have  not  understood 
his  question;  and  I  began  to  tell  him  the  difference 
between  Marius  and  every  other  prose  narrative  in  the 
English  language  was  its  seriousness.  You  have  given  us 
a  prose  narrative,  Pater,  as  serious  as  The  Excursion,  and 
have  thereby  done  a  great  service,  though  it  will  be  a  long 
time  before  criticism  will  become  aware  of  what  you  have 
done  and  your  influence  be  felt.  And  there  is  another 
thing  I'd  like  to  say,  Pater,  You  were  upstairs  dressing 
for  dinner,  no  doubt,  so  I  shall  not  detain  you:  a  few 
sentences,  that  is  all.  Pater  assured  me  that  he  was  in  no 
hurry;  he  was  dining  at  home,  and  had  an  hour  to  spare  if 
I  cared  to  avail  myself  of  it.  What  strikes  me,  I  continued, 
apart  from  the  seriousness  that  I  find  in  your  book,  a 
seriousness  which  you  must  yourself  be  aware  of  and  which 
contrasts  with  the  triviality  of  Dickens  and  Thackeray 
and  all  the  other  hirelings  in  the  pay  of  the  circulating 
libraries,  is  that  in  writing  about  Marius  you  write  about 
mankind  rather  than  about  the  mere  individual.  For  we 
have  had  story-tellers  who  have  related  fairly  well  how  a 
man  pursued  an  enemy  down  passages  and  through  tapes- 
tried halls  to  see  him  at  last  disappearing  through  a 
panelled  door;  and  there  have  been  other  story-tellers,  a 
more  numerous  class,  perhaps,  who  have  related  domestic 
estrangements,  divorced  wives  who  return  to  their  old 
homes  to  rock  an  ailing  child  or  to  nurse  a  husband  whose 
bones  have  been  broken  in  a  hunting  accident.  In  the 
first  instance  the  unfortunate  wife  takes  advantage  of  her 
late  relative's  absence  from  home  to  see  her  child;  in  the 
second  she  has  recourse  to  some  trivial  disguise,  make- 
believe,  but  no  writer  except  yourself,  my  dear  Pater,  has 
written  a  serious  story  in  which  jokes  good  and  bad  do 
not  occur,  in  which  the  quality  known  as  humour  is 
omitted. 


AVOWALS  197 

You  were  the  first  to  discover  in  English  literature 
that  life  is  neither  jocular  nor  melodramatic,  and  in  that 
most  beautiful  of  all  chapters,  White  Nights,  your  object 
was  not  to  tell  a  mere  story,  which  when  read  is  not  worth 
reading  a  second  time  but  to  relate  the  states  of  con- 
sciousness through  which  Marius  passes,  his  hopes,  fears, 
aspirations  and  dreams,  his  interest  in  common  things, 
those  that  always  have  and  always  will  interest  mankind, 
his  interest  in  the  culture  of  the  vine  and  olive  which  has  a 
peculiar  grace  of  its  own,  and  might  well  contribute  to  the 
production  of  an  ideal  dignity  of  character  like  that  of 
nature  itself  in  its  gifted  region.  I  wonder  if  you  know 
how  beautiful  the  page  is  on  which  those  words  occur. 
On  the  next  page  you  relate  that  the  ancient  hymn,  Luna 
Novella,  was  still  sung  by  the  people  as  the  new  moon 
grew  bright  in  the  west,  and  then  those  lovely  words,  al- 
most fragrant  words:  The  life  of  the  widow,  languid, 
shadowy,  but  with  the  poignancy  of  regret.  And  if  I  do 
not  speak  of  his  description  of  the  slopes  of  Luna,  it  is 
because  it  does  not  throw  light  upon  a  side  of  your  art 
that  I  wish  to  elucidate  as  well  as  the  page  in  which  you 
tell  that  a  certain  vague  fear  of  evil,  constantly  in  him, 
enhanced  still  further  the  sentiment  of  home  as  a  place 
of  tried  security.  And  then  you  illustrate  Marius's  sense 
of  some  unexplored  evil,  ever  dogging  his  steps  with  an 
anecdote:  How  one  fierce  day  in  early  summer  he  came 
upon  some  snakes  breeding  as  he  walked  along  a  narrow 
road  and  avoided  that  place  ever  afterwards.  It  made  his 
sleep  uneasy  for  many  days;  but  best  of  all  for  my  pur- 
pose is  the  passage  in  which  you  compare  Marius  to  the 
young  Ion  in  the  beautiful  opening  of  the  play  by  Eurip- 
ides, for  this  passage  is  applicable  not  to  one  man  but  to 
nearly  all  men.  You  were  not  writing  about  any  indivi- 
dual but  about  mankind. 

Pater  waited  till  my  vehemence  had  spent  itself,  and 
then  he  asked  me  if  in  doing  all  I  said  he  had  done  he 


198  AVOWALS 

had  not  lost  something  of  Marius's  individual  character. 
Of  course  you  did,  Pater,  but  you  contrasted  Marius  with 
his  friend  Flavius,  who  is  highly  individualised.  I  am  glad 
you  think  so,  Pater  said,  but  I  did  not  do  it  for  that  reason 
or  any  particular  reason.  If  you  had  you  would  not  have 
done  it  so  well,  I  answered,  and  next  morning  I  wrote  to 
him,  saying  that  Marius  was  the  great  atonement  for  all 
the  bad  novels  that  have  been  written  in  the  English 
language.  And  having  put  off  all  that  lay  heaviest  upon 
my  mind,  I  fell  to  thinking  that  in  writing  about  Pater, 
critics  of  all  sorts,  high  and  low,  big  and  small,  have  spoken 
about  the  inevitable  word  without  having  considered  what 
they  wished  to  say,  content  to  repeat  a  set  phrase.  The 
inevitable  word  was  Flaubert's  invention,  and  was  forced 
upon  him  because  of  his  inability  to  write  a  long  sentence, 
only  short  ones  relieved  by  the  startling  adjective,  and 
these  are  apt  to  get  tiresome.  Pater's  complaint  that 
Plato's  sentences  are  long  may  be  regarded  as  Pater's 
single  excursion  into  humour,  for  however  long  Plato's 
sentences  may  be  we  can  affirm  with  safety  that  none  are 
longer  than  Pater's.  It  is  true  that  Landor  did  not  write 
long  sentences,  maybe  for  the  sake  of  the  dialogue;  that 
may  be  the  reason;  but  it  was  Pater's  wont  to  include 
long  parentheses  and  to  continue  his  sentences  with  the 
aid  of  conjunctions,  in  the  hope,  and  no  vain  one,  of 
getting  his  prose  to  flow  to  a  murmurous  melody,  rising 
and  disappearing  like  water  mysteriously.  He  said  in 
The  Renaissance  that  the  tendency  of  all  the  arts  is  to 
aspire  to  the  condition  of  music,  his  theory  and  his 
practice  was  the  same,  and  if  he  had  lived  to  hear 
L'apers-midi  d'un  Faune,  he  could  not  have  done  else  but 
think  that  he  was  listening  to  his  own  prose  changed  into 
music  by  some  sorcerer  or  sorcerers,  malign  or  benevolent. 
The  inevitable  word,  which  has  proved  of  so  much 
use  to  critics  in  filling  up  columns,  was  not  sought  by 
him,  he  found  it  without  seeking;    he  sought  the  para- 


AVOWALS  199 

graph,  and  afterwards  the  page,  and  after  the  page  the 
chapter.  And  the  chapter  was  sought  in  its  relation  to 
the  book;  the  book  was  always  in  his  mind,  and  it  was 
because  he  could  concentrate  on  it  that  he  is  a  greater 
writer  than  any  of  the  Frenchmen  we  have  fallen  into  the 
habit  of  talking  about — the  unfortunate  Flaubert,  whose 
power  over  words  was  so  stinted  that  he  found  himself 
obliged  in  the  end  to  limit  his  dialogue  to  How  are  you? 
or  to  Good-morning!  And  such  repudiation  of  dialogue 
helped  to  formulate  the  naturalistic  doctrine  that  dialogue 
was  illiterate;  despite  Rabelais,  Shakespeare  and  Balzac; 
all  and  sundry  forgot  that  they  must  not  only  conquer 
dialogue,  but,  what  is  more  difficult,  patter. 

Of  what  is  known  as  purple  passages,  Pater  is  almost 
guiltless;  only  one  is  to  be  discovered,  a  flagrant  senti- 
mentality written  about  the  Gioconda,  a  lady  who  never 
ceases  to  smile,  as  somebody  has  said,  at  the  nonsense  she 
hears  talked  about  her  every  day  in  the  Louvre.  But 
Pater  received  compliments  for  his  interpretation  of  her 
smile  with  a  certain  bland  courtesy  all  his  own.  I  was 
always  sorry  for  him  in  those  moments,  and  once  took 
pity,  interrupting  an  admirer  with  the  assurance  that  the 
repaint  was  answerable  for  the  plunger  in  deep  seas,  etc. 
A  regrettable  incident  it  is,  truly,  this  passage,  in  a  writer 
in  whom  exaggeration  and  emphasis  are,  and  should  be, 
almost  absent.  We  would  not  wish,  however,  the  passage 
away,  for  a  little  vulgarity  is  needed,  surely,  if  a  great 
writer  must  be  made  known  to  the  public.  It  would 
not  be  easy  to  give  reasons  why  a  great  writer  should  be 
made  known  to  the  public,  but  admitting  that  he  must  be 
made  known,  the  purple  passage  in  question  will  take  the 
place  of  the  jam  that  helps  down  the  Gregory  powder. 
And  having  explained  away  the  plunger  in  deep  seas  as 
well  as  my  small  talent  allows  me  to  do,  I  should  like  to 
say  that  pictures  of  this  sentimental  kind  cannot  be  con- 
sidered otherwise  than  as  literary  misfortunes;   for  it  is 


200  AVOWALS 

not  true  that  bad  pictures  give  birth  to  good  literature. 
It  may  be  well,  or  it  may  be  ill  to  add  to  this  a  word  of 
advice :  that  it  is  not  wise  for  men  of  letters  who  have  not 
painted  themselves,  who  have  never  had  their  fingers  in 
the  gallipot  and  spent  half  their  lives  in  studios  in  the 
company  of  painters  to  express  opinions  about  particular 
pictures.  It  would  do  better,  it  seems  to  me,  for  them  to 
write  about  the  plastic  arts  remotely,  as  Pater  did  about 
the  Greek  marbles,  especially  about  those  with  whom  they 
are  not  acquainted  directly,  for  direct  acquaintance  may 
lead  us  into  direct  appreciations,  and  these  always  seem 
foolish  in  the  studios.  It  is  true  that  the  studios  have 
their  own  mistakes  in  appreciation  to  explain  away  as 
best  they  can,  so  whichever  way  we  turn  we  drop  into 
paradox.  Who  would  have  thought  that  Pater  would 
have  seen  a  masterpiece  in  the  Blenheim  Raphael,  and 
committed  himself  to  the  opinion  that  it  is  in  this  one  that 
all  Raphael's  gifts  came  to  perfect  flower?  One  of  Pater's 
biographers  mentions  that  Pater  hankered  after  Burne- 
Jones's  pictures,  an  indiscretion  on  a  par  with  a  valet 
who  betrays  the  fact  that  his  master  wears  a  wig.  The 
episode  about  the  plunger  in  deep  seas  humanised  Pater 
sufficiently — that  and  his  admiration  of  the  Blenheim 
Raphael — and  we  might  have  been  spared  the  too  human 
tale  of  a  fascination  little  short  of  disreputable.  It  will 
be  said  in  Pater's  defence  that  the  picture  was  brought  to 
London  with  much  hurraying  and  shouting  and  assevera- 
tions that  seventy  thousand  golden  guineas  were  paid  for 
it.  And  this  defence  should  not  be  looked  upon  as  special 
pleading;  in  such  moments  of  popular  judgment  the  best 
of  us  lose  our  heads;  and  Pater's  admiration  of  Burne- 
Jones  can  be  dealt  with  more  summarily.  For  we  do  not 
read  of  it  in  his  own  words,  but  in  those  of  a  biographer 
who  was,  no  doubt,  recording  some  memory.  But  the 
biographer's  memory  is  often  untrustworthy,  and  we  pre- 
fer to  regard  him  as  such,  rather  than  to  believe  that  a 


AVOWALS  201 

man  could  hanker  after  Burne-Jones  and  appreciate  Botti- 
celli as  Pater  certainly  seems  to  have  done  in  his  too  brief 
essay,  the  most  beautiful  thing,  perhaps,  in  a  book  full 
of  beautiful  things. 

Botticelli  rises  out  of  Pater's  prose  like  a  dream  out  of 
sleep,  a  young  man  inspired  in  his  youth,  in  the  April 
morning  of  the  Renaissance,  and  in  the  prose  moving 
along  to  a  music  fresh  as  flowers  we  see  him  painting 
his  own  portrait  in  the  story  of  his  own  age  in  The  Prima- 
vera,  and  doing  it  so  succinctly,  we  may  say  so  pointedly, 
that  it  is  hard  to  discard  the  idea  that  he  was  aware 
of  the  Renaissance,  and  that  he  deemed  himself  the 
chronicler  of  it,  though  it  may  be,  of  course,  that  Botti- 
celli was  concerned  only  with  the  thought  of  the  spring- 
tide that  returns  every  year,  but  if  this  were  so,  and  he 
was  without  any  thought  of  the  paganism  that  was  return- 
ing to  the  world,  why  should  he  have  introduced  fauns  and 
dryads  into  his  picture?  It  is  delightful  to  think  that 
somebody  knew  he  was  born  on  the  eve  of  a  great  age, 
a  precursor  of  wonderful  things  to  come,  but  of  none 
more  lovely  than  the  early  blossoms  himself  was  bringing. 
What  came  after  may  be  said  to  be  more  perfect,  but 
none  can  be  said  to  be  more  enchanting  than  the  sweet 
girl  advancing  with  all  the  gaiety  of  the  season  in  her 
face,  her  white  hands  filled  with  flowers.  In  my  memory 
of  the  essay  there  is  little  doubt  that  Pater  must  have 
often  walked  immersed  in  thoughts  of  a  young  man 
rejoicing  in  a  world  grown  suddenly  young  again,  who 
looked  on  himself,  as  I  have  said,  as  the  chronicler  of 
its  beauty,  his  own  genius  seeming  to  him,  not  so  much 
a  personal  gift,  as  one  bestowed  upon  him  for  an  almost 
divine  purpose,  that  of  making  known  to  men  their  own 
wonderful  beauty  and  the  beauty  of  women  and  chil- 
dren, of  mountains,  flowers,  of  all  things  that  the  eye 
can  see,  and  applying  his  gift  with  extraordinary  joyous- 
ness  to  its  task  of  calling  on  the  sleepers,  prone  to  turn 


202  AVOWALS 

round  and  fall  back  into  the  sleep  of  monasticism,  to 
awaken  and  rejoice  in  the  beauty  of  the  morning.  It 
is  thus  that  Pater  presents  Botticelli  to  us,  a  young  man 
between  the  ages  of  twenty  and  thirty,  blithe,  debonnair, 
with  smiling  eyes,  long  curls  on  his  shoulder,  and  wearing 
a  crimson  vest.  After  thirty  we  lose  sight  of  him.  He 
does  not  seem  to  have  had  any  middle  age,  and  Pater 
avoids  dwelling  upon  his  old  age  when  this  first  flower, 
and  in  many  ways  the  most  beautiful  flower  of  the  Renais- 
sance, withered  in  the  influence  of  a  cruel  theology  that 
seemed  to  have  passed  away,  but  which  had  again 
stretched  forth  a  claw  setting  this  glad  spirit  illustrating 
Dante's  monastic  dream  with  a  pencil  that  could  not 
wholly  forget  the  humanities  of  the  Renaissance.  Alas! 
Savonarola  had  gotten  hold  of  him  and  the  monk  would 
have  brought  back  the  Middle  Ages  in  all  its  ugliness  if 
the  good  Pope  Alexander  had  not  ordered  his  burning. 
Of  this  monk  there  is  little,  it  may  be  there  is  no  mention 
of  him  in  the  essay,  Pater's  purpose  being  to  set  us  dream- 
ing of  the  young  man  who  begins  life  so  happily  and  ended 
it  so  sadly.  The  essay  reads  gaily,  like  an  opera  by 
Mozart,  the  prose  rhythms  rising  and  falling  amid  delight- 
ful suspensions  of  thought,  each  ordained  to  carry  the 
music  on  till  the  book  drops  on  the  reader's  knee  and  he 
sits  asking  himself  if  Pater  has  lost  anything  that  litera- 
ture can  give,  and  if  the  noble  pages  that  Fromentin  con- 
secrates to  the  genius  of  Ruysdael  be  not  more  legitimate. 
The  temptation  is  sore  within  me  to  talk  about  Fromentin, 
but  it  will  be  more  legitimate  to  continue  telling  Pater,  a 
greater  writer  than  Fromentin,  whose  name  rises  up  in 
my  mind  only  in  his  essay  on  Ruysdael,  for  in  none  other 
does  he  give  us  the  painter  as  part  and  parcel  of  his  works, 
inseparable  as  body  from  soul.  Nor  does  Pater  succeed 
twice  in  this  great  achievement;  we  get  glimpses  of 
Michelangelo,  Leonardo  and  the  residue,  but  no  more. 
And  it  may  be  that  after  Botticelli,  Pater's  best  portrait 


AVOWALS  203 

is  Winckelmann,  whose  death  is  thrilling,  and  sheds  a 
light  upon  his  human  nature  and  the  origin  of  his  love  of 
Greek  sculpture. 

There  are  pages  in  The  Renaissance  as  beautiful  as  any 
he  has  written,  and  the  perfection  is  so  flawless  that  it  is 
difficult  to  perceive  while  reading  that  all  are  not  equally 
inspired.  Therefore  the  moral  of  the  book  is,  though 
the  inspiration  be  not  always  by  us,  it  is  our  business 
to  write  beautiful  pages,  so  that  we  may  be  prepared  to 
receive  the  sacred  flame  when  it  shall  choose  to  descend 
into  our  lantern;  our  care  should  be  that  the  lantern  be 
worthy  of  the  flame  when  it  comes.  And  these  words 
lead  me  right  up  to  the  question  that  has  been  on  the  lips 
of  whomsoever  reads  me. 

Whence  came  that  style,  unlike  all  other  styles?  We 
know  that  Pater  did  not  receive  it  from  the  moon,  nor 
from  a  fairy,  and  through  the  indiscretion  of  a  biographer 
we  know  it  was  not  in  the  first  paper  that  he  wrote. 
So  Pater's  style  was  born  of  this  earth,  and  may  be  traced 
back  to  its  source,  a  thing,  however,  that  the  critics 
of  great  reading  have  not  yet  succeeded  in  doing;  but 
what  is  may  be  discovered,  and  months  and  years  went 
by  in  the  quest  of  Pater's  spring-head  and  source,  but 
not  till  ten  years  ago  was  my  hand  guided  by  what  we 
term  accident  to  Goethe's  Italian  Journey,  a  book  given 
to  me  by  dear  Edward,  one  that  I  had  read  here  and 
there  and  wearied  of,  it  seeming  to  me  a  pompous,  empty 
narrative  of  a  journey  in  Italy,  lacking  character,  life  and 
movement;  the  sort  of  book  that  our  fathers  and  grand- 
fathers used  to  put  together  when  they  returned  home 
from  the  grand  tour.  And  it  was  with  casual  eyes  that  I 
wandered  once  more  through  the  pages,  reading  that 
Goethe  was  received  by  the  flunkeys  of  a  certain  duchess, 
who  conducted  him  up  a  staircase  which  he  thought  rather 
fine;  on  the  next  page  that  somebody  put  a  carriage  at 
his  disposal  so  that  he  might  drive  out  in  the  afternoon 


204  AVOWALS 

and  admire  the  views;  like  the  staircase,  these  seemed 
to  him  very  fine;  the  next  day  he  visited  the  museum, 
not  to  meet  a  lady,  which  would  have  been  admirable, 
but  to  make  a  drawing  of  the  Apollo,  and  I  was  about 
to  lay  the  book  aside  wearily  when  my  eyes  alighted  on  a 
chapter  entitled  Saint  Philip  Neri.  The  first  sentence 
caught  my  attention  and  I  finished  the  page  easily;  the 
book  then  dropping  on  my  knees  I  saw  in  a  vision  Pater 
in  a  great  library,  standing  on  the  library  steps  reading 
a  book  he  had  taken  from  the  shelves  above  him,  and 
he  continued  reading  for  what  seemed  to  me  a  long 
while,  returning  the  book  suddenly,  but  remaining  (it 
was  this  that  seemed  strange),  absorbed  in  thought,  on 
the  fifth  step  of  the  ladder.  For  what  does  he  remain 
standing  on  the  fifth  step  of  the  ladder?  I  asked  myself. 
And  of  what  is  he  thinking?  In  vision,  however,  almost 
everything  is  revealed  to  us,  and  I  very  soon  began  to 
learn,  or  it  was  borne  in  upon  me,  that  he  had  been 
reading  Goethe's  study  of  Saint  Philip  Neri?  Thoughts 
were  flocking  in  his  mind,  and  at  last  some  of  these 
were  carried  over  into  my  mind,  and  I  learned  that 
he  was  not  certain  whether  he  should  write  an  article 
on  Goethe's  style  with  special  reference  to  Saint  Philip 
Neri,  or  say  nothing  about  it.  He  will  never  speak 
about  it,  my  soul  answered  me,  and  my  delicious  faith 
in  human  nature  was  rewarded,  for  Pater  woke  from 
his  reverie  looking  round  to  make  sure  he  was  not  being 
watched,  and  finding  himself  alone  in  the  library,  he 
returned  the  book  to  its  place,  and  having  fully  satis- 
fied himself  he  had  returned  it  to  its  exact  place,  he 
removed  the  steps  to  another  part  of  the  library  and 
called  to  the  librarian,  to  whom  he  put  some  questions 
regarding  books  dealing  with  the  life  and  time  of  the 
troubadours. 

My  vision  ended  abruptly,  which  is  the  way  of  visions, 
and  I  said:  how  human,  so  human,  that  it  must  have  been 


AVOWALS  205 

as  I  dreamt  it,  and  picking  up  the  book  that  had  slipped 
from  my  knees  to  the  floor  I  continued  Saint  Philip  Neri  a 
little  further,  stopping  again  and  again  to  indulge  myself 
in  meditation,  saying  to  myself:  I  have  come  upon  Pater's 
origins,  but  if  I  make  it  known  to  the  world  it  will  be 
said  that  I  have  robbed  Pater  of  part  of  his  glory.  On 
the  other  hand  it  will  seem  to  many  that  my  discovery 
will  give  Pater  a  literary  father,  a  thing  he  needs;  and 
how  much  greater  than  his  father  he  is — his  father  re- 
deemed from  pomposity  and  endeared  to  us  by  a  touch  of 
nature  as  Wagner  was  by  the  publication  of  the  Wesen- 
donck  letters.  And  to  attach  Pater  to  other  human 
beings,  to  rescue  him  from  isolation,  shall  be  my  task.  I 
see  it  all,  and,  I  think  I  see  it  clearly. 


CHAPTER  11. 

WHEN  Pater  lived  in  the  Kensington  house,  it  began 
to  be  known  among  his  friends  that  he  contributed 
anonymous  articles  on  current  literature  to  a  weekly 
newspaper,  and  when  we  spoke  of  these  articles  among 
ourselves  we  expatiated  in  regret,  and  were  at  variance 
regarding  his  motive  in  writing  these  articles,  for  we  did 
not  know  that  the  master  could  weave  a  fine  silken  woof 
out  of  such  a  poor  thread  as  current  literature,  saying  it 
could  hardly  be  for  the  money  they  brought  in,  till  at  last 
Arthur  Symons  began  to  put  forward  the  explanation, 
a  partial  one,  which  will  not  find  ready  acceptance,  that 
Pater  did  not  wish  to  miss  altogether  his  connection  with 
the  passing  hour.  Every  life,  said  Symons,  however 
secluded,  needs  an  outlet.  I  find  mine  in  the  ballet, 
and  he  finds  his  in  The  Guardian. 

An  explanation  this  is  of  Pater's  journalism  that  would 
have  been  nearer  the  truth  if  it  had  been  expressed  less 


206  AVOWALS 

flippantly.  Symons  should  have  said:  if  Pater  had  been 
discovered  writing  for  The  World,  or  Truth,  his  position 
would  be  as  difficult  as  mine  would  be  were  I  to  praise 
the  last  new  dancer  at  the  Alhambra;  but  The  Guardian 
is  a  thoughtful  Protestant  paper,  and  in  his  key  though 
he  is  not  a  Christian.  Quite  true  Pater  liked  the  Protes- 
tant convention,  and  the  belief  was  never  very  far  from 
him  that  it  is  by  the  acceptation  of  the  traditional  and 
the  formal  that  we  escape  from  the  fretful.  A  great  deal 
of  Pater  was  in  his  reverence  for  tradition,  usage  and 
Symons  should  have  noted  the  physical  likeness  that 
the  beautifullest  poet  and  prose  writer  of  our  genera- 
tion bore  one  to  the  other.  He  did  not  do  this,  an  over- 
sight, nor  did  he  draw  attention  to  the  fact  that  the 
likeness  was  not  a  mere  bodily  likeness,  for  both  poet 
and  prose  writer  were  Agnostics,  great  adherents  to  re- 
ligious conventions,  two  different  conventions,  it  is  true, 
but  the  difference  concerns  only  the  theologians,  for  in 
these  modern  days  respect  for  ancient  usages  and  tradi- 
tions takes  the  place  of  faith.  It  may  be  doubted  if 
Verlaine  would  have  consented  to  flout  his  conventions  by 
any  public  act  or  printed  word;  that  Pater  would  not 
flout  his  is  beyond  dispute,  and  that  is  why  I  cannot  but 
wonder  at  my  lack  of  perception  when  one  day,  remem- 
bering suddenly  that  he  wrote  essays  for  The  Guardian, 
I  sent  him  a  book  I  had  just  written,  with  a  note  asking 
him  to  review  it.  If  I  were  to  tell  the  theme,  the  sub- 
ject of  this  book,  it  would  not  be  difficult  for  anyone  to 
apprehend  the  embarrassment  Pater  must  have  felt  on 
glancing  through  my  pages.  It  is  sufficient  to  say  that 
the  subject  was  not  one  that  could  be  discussed  in  The 
Guardian,  even  by  such  a  master  of  words  as  Pater,  and  I 
can  imagine  him  laying  the  book  aside  and  walking  to 
and  fro,  along  and  across  the  room  above  the  drawing- 
room,  his  workroom,  till  at  last,  wearied  out,  he  sat  down 
to  write  an  answer,  an  answer  that  demanded  all  his 


AVOWALS  207 

mastery  over  language;  indeed,  several  draftings  had  to 
be  written  before  lie  succeeded  in  expressing  himself 
truthfully,  yet  without  giving  offence.  Would  that  that 
letter  had  not  passed  from  me,  for  it  was  an  example  of 
his  power  to  compel  words,  to  convey  his  soul's  meaning, 
yet  without  departing  from  that  graciousness  from  which 
he  could  not  separate  himself,  it  being  himself.  But  to 
the  letter!  I  shall  tell  in  vain  that  he  said  that  he  was 
no  proper  critic  of  the  story  I  sent  him,  and  that  the  ob- 
ject of  violent  acts  was  not  clear  to  him.  He  said  some- 
thing very  like  that,  and  he  may  have  added  that  the 
object  of  art  is  to  enable  us  to  forget  the  crude  and  the 
violent.  But  even  if  I  could  recall  the  substance  of  the 
letter  itself,  little  would  be  gained,  but  the  substance  of 
such  a  letter,  if  not  of  all  letters,  is  the  common  property 
of  mankind.  Thoughts  cannot  be  original,  for  all  have 
been  uttered  thousands  of  years  ago.  We  are  ourselves 
only  in  the  pattern  we  weave,  and  Pater's  beautiful  pat- 
tern, as  explicit  in  his  letters  as  in  his  works,  cannot  be 
produced  by  me,  which  is  a  pity,  for  his  letters  to  me 
would  help  readers  to  penetrate  the  mind  that  wrote 
Marius  and  set  Jean  Baptiste's  sister  dreaming  of  Wat- 
teau  away  in  Paris,  without  thinking  that  she  loved 
him.  It  seems  to  me  that  I  am  repeating  myself,  but  on 
certain  points  of  character  we  need  not  be  afraid  of  re- 
petition. However  slight  the  note  was  his  genius  was 
in  it  and  that  graciousness  which  we  associate  with 
Raphael — a  very  Pateresque  painter  in  those  pictures  in 
which  none  had  a  hand  but  he.  A  more  perfect  artist 
than  Raphael,  for  Raphael  left  many  bad  pictures  and 
work  accomplished  by  subordinates,  but  Pater  was  only 
once  guilty,  in  my  opinion,  of  a  passage  that  was  unworthy 
of  him.  Mr  Gosse  may  speak  of  a  few  waxen  passages, 
saying  that  Pater's  genius  ranked  very  high  indeed  when 

his  genius  was  present,  but  unfortunately let  him  who 

cares  to  do  so  finish  this  sentence.     He  will  have  no 


208  AVOWALS 

difficulty  in  finding  a  suitable  end  among  the  many  in- 
sipid articles  that  have  been  written  about  the  greatest 
master  of  English  prose.  Ah!  had  I  not  lost  the  letter. 
To  look  for  it  again  would  be  useless,  and  to  seek  its 
contents  in  my  memory  would  be  vain.  Were  I  to  seek 
it,  that  passage  about  the  Gioconda  would  not  fail  to  rise 
from  deep  seas  to  tantalise  me.  So  I  will  forget  the 
Gioconda  and  pass  on  to  something  which  is  to  my  credit, 
that  for  no  single  moment  nor  fraction  of  a  moment  did  I 
hold  Pater's  judgment  regarding  my  book  in  question. 
One  does  not  argue  about  literature  with  Pater;  was  it 
Gautier  who  said:  One  does  not  discuss  theology  with 
God?  Once  more  to  my  story.  After  folding  up  his  let- 
ter and  putting  it  away,  torn  in  half  in  fretful  moment, 
I  said  to  myself:  The  only  thing  to  be  done  is  to  write 
another  book,  and  try  to  forget  this  ridiculous  mistake  of 
mine.  At  that  time  I  was  engaged  on  another,  one  which 
was  nearing  completion,  and  I  began  to  ask  myself  if 
Pater  could  be  interested  in  a  narrative  about  an  im- 
moral young  man  who  went  to  Paris  in  quest  of  art?  the 
Confessions  were  then  appearing  in  an  obscure  periodical, 
and  I  did  not  even  suspect  they  might  come  into  his 
hands.  A  few  days  afterwards,  on  seeing  Pater's  beauti- 
ful, precise  handwriting  on  the  envelope,  I  said:  Good 
heavens,  he  is  not  going  to  write  to  me  again  about  that 

unfortunate 

It  was  part  of  Pater's  style  not  to  insist,  to  refrain  from 
what  is  familiarly  known  as  rubbing  it  in;  a  copy  of  the 
magazine  in  which  I  was  writing  my  Confessions  had  come 
into  his  hands,  and  his  style — le  style  c'est  Vhomme — com- 
pelled him  to  tell  me  how  much  he  admired  my  apprecia- 
tions of  the  modern  French  poets;  to  compensate  me,  I 
said,  for  his  first  letter,  which  has  rankled  in  his  mind 
longer  than  in  mine.  Ah,  if  that  letter  had  not  been  lost, 
too,  a  good  deal  of  Pater's  would  illuminate  this  page. 
The  third  letter,  the  letter  he  wrote  to  me  when  he  received 


AVOWALS  209 

his  copy  of  The  Confessions  of  a  Young  Man,  was  sought 
in  febrile  excitement  for  many  hours.  At  last  my  secre- 
tary came  into  the  room,  rousing  me  from  the  lethargy  of 
despair  into  which  I  had  fallen.  Is  this  the  letter  you 
were  looking  for?  I  found  it  at  the  bottom  of  the  book- 
case. 

Brasenose  College, 
March  9th. 
My  dear,  audacious  Moore, — 

Many  thanks  for  the  Confessions;  which  I  have  read 
with  great  interest  and  admiration  for  your  originality — 
your  delightful  criticisms — your  Aristophanic  joy,  or  at 
least  enjoyment,  in  life — your  unfailing  liveliness.  Of 
course,  there  are  many  things  in  the  book  I  don't  agree 
with.  But  then,  in  the  case  of  so  satiric  a  book,  I  suppose 
one  is  hardly  expected  to  agree  or  disagree.  What  I 
cannot  doubt  of  is  the  literary  faculty  displayed.  Thou 
com'st  in  such  a  questionable  shape!  I  feel  inclined  to 
say,  on  finishing  your  book;  shape  morally,  I  mean;  not 
in  reference  to  style. 

You  speak  of  my  own  work  very  pleasantly;  but  my 
enjoyment  has  been  independent  of  that.  And  still  I 
wonder  how  much  you  may  be  losing,  both  for  yourself  and 
for  your  writings,  by  what,  in  spite  of  its  gaiety  and  good- 
nature and  genuine  sense  of  the  beauty  of  many  things,  I 
must  still  call  a  cynical,  and  therefore  exclusive  way  of 
looking  at  the  world.     You  call  it  only  realistic.     Still! 

With  sincere  wishes  for  the  future  success  of  your  most 
entertaining  pen. 

Very  sincerely  yours, 

Walter  Pater. 

It  had  fallen  amid  the  dust  through  a  crack,  I  suppose, 
and  for  three  or  four  days,  for  a  week,  perchance,  during 
my  walks,  and  whilst  sitting  by  the  fire,  thoughts  of  Pater's 
letter  overflowed  my  mind,  keeping  me  awake  at  night, 


210  AVOWALS 

and  no  sleep  was  gotten  till  the  morning  dusk  began  to 
divide  the  curtains,  for  nothing  else  seemed  worth  thinking 
about;  and  it  seemed  to  me  as  if  I  had  become  possessed 
of  a  happiness  that  could  not  die.  A  happy  week  it  was 
that  I  spent  certainly  with  that  letter  always  uppermost 
in  my  mind;  no  blighting  thought  going  by  till  Henry 
James's  contention  of  insincerity,  and  the  proof  he  had 
advanced  in  support  of  it  was  remembered — Pater's  wish 
to  hunt  with  the  Pagan  hounds  and  run  with  the  Christian 
hare,  to  racommoder  la  chevre  et  le  chou,  was  remembered, 
with  a  sudden  gust  of  resentment.  And  it  was  in  an 
intemperate  moment  that  I  said  to  myself:  we  should 
be  always  on  our  guard  against  these  sudden  sallies  of 
feeling.  Pater's  letter  is  proof  that  Henry  James's  con- 
tention was  not  altogether  a  false  one,  and  I  took  the 
letter  up  and  read:  And  still  I  wonder  how  much  you 
may  be  losing,  both  for  yourself  and  for  your  readers. 

The  insincerity  that  Henry  James  complained  of  was 
the  complaint  of  the  sinner  against  the  almost  virtuous 
man,  for  James  never  came  to  terms  with  anything  but 
perhaps  terraces  and  cigarettes  and  was  not  relished  even 
by  his  admirers  till  he  became  a  little  rank;  his  mind 
decayed  slowly;  we  were  still  far  from  The  Wings  of  the 
Dove,  but  even  in  The  Two  Magics  there  was  flavour  that 
reminded  me  of  a  discussion  overheard  by  me  in  a  third- 
class  carriage: 

I  can't  think,  said  the  first  footman,  what  on  earth  the 
gentry  can  see  in  their  birds  till  they  begins  to  hum. 
More  can't  I,  the  second  footman  answered,  adding,  after 
a  long  pause:  all  the  same,  I  must  say  I  likes  my  fish  a 
bit  off. 

James  was  withal  a  shrewd  critic  of  literature,  and  it  is 
to  his  credit  to  have  detected  an  insincere  accent  which  I 
refused  to  listen  to.  But  alas,  Pater's  letter  is  a  warrant 
for  James's  criticism;  he  admonishes  me  to  show  myself 
in  only  carefully  prepared  aspects;   and  on  looking  into 


AVOWALS  211 

the  letter  again  I  saw  that  I  had  misread  Pater's  letter. 
The  word  readers  did  not  occur  in  it,  and  I  muttered 
aloud,  as  is  my  wont  when  engaged  with  thoughts  of 
singular  interest  to  me:  how  perfectly  Pater  writes. 
Here  is  an  instance:  And  still  I  wonder  how  much  you 
may  be  losing,  both  for  yourself  and  your  writings.  He 
does  not  speak  of  readers;  he  is  very  subtle  and  cannot  be 
caught  out  by  such  as  James.  Ah,  had  he  been  present  to 
answer  him!  I  muttered,  and  it  seemed  to  me  that  my 
admiration  of  Pater  rose  higher  and  became,  as  it  were, 
a  fresh  exaltation.  Yet  the  thought  that  the  letter  was  an 
admonition  to  put  on  a  mask  could  not  be  kept  out  of  my 
mind,  and  instead  of  bringing  us  closer  together  the  letter 
divided  us.  I  wished  for  a  more  complete  friendship,  for 
a  constant  interchange  of  ideas,  and  could  not  doubt  that 
Pater  wished  to  help  me.  Yet  our  friendship  did  not  ad- 
vance, we  seemed  to  be  drifting  apart,  and  puzzled  to 
account  for  this  estrangement,  I  complained  to  Symons  of 
Pater's  reserve.  He  did  not  feel  Pater  to  be  reserved,  he 
said.  But  was  it  that  Pater  was  not  reserved  with  Symons, 
or  was  it  that  Symons  did  not  aspire  to  the  same  intimacy 
as  I  did?  Symons  said  that  Pater  did  not  like  being 
accosted  while  out  walking,  for  he  went  out  to  meditate  on 
what  he  had  written  that  morning  and  to  consider  what  he 
would  write  next  morning.  I  did  not  ask  myself  whether 
Symons  was  right  or  wrong,  but  accepted  what  he  said  as 
the  truth,  for  it  was  easy  to  believe  that  Pater  looked  upon 
interruptions  in  his  walks  as  inconvenient  breaks  in  his 
meditations.  So  I  resolved  never  to  accost  him  again, 
never  to  take  his  arm  and  walk  a  little  way  with  him,  as 
had  been  my  custom.  It  was  not  long  after  this  resolve 
that  I  met  him  in  Knightsbridge,  and  remembering  that 
I  had  been  told  that  I  must  not  accost  him  in  his  walks, 
I  crossed  over  the  road,  and  as  I  did  so  our  eyes  met. 
Pater's  glance  was  sidelong,  suspicious,  reproachful,  a 
glance  which  I  sought  to  interpret  as  one  of  gratitude, 


212  AVOWALS 

but  was  not  quite  sure.  The  not  quite  sure  lay  far  back 
in  my  mind  for  Symons's  warning  that  I  must  not  inter- 
rupt Pater  in  his  walks  was  accepted  without  question. 
How  it  fell  out  that  Symons's  admonition  was  listened  to 
and  acted  upon  without  misgiving  in  a  matter  so  im- 
portant as  my  almost  affectionate  relations  with  Pater, 
cannot  be  explained  except  by  the  admission  that  there 
is  incurable  frivolity  in  me.  But  this  admission  is  not 
sufficient,  for  it  has  just  come  to  me  that  about  the  time 
I  am  speaking  of  I  was  beginning  to  weary  of  Pater — of 
his  shyness.  I  sought  him  out  no  longer,  and  though 
Pater  did  not  show  that  he  resented  my  conduct  when 
we  came  together  at  dinner  and  luncheon  in  the  houses 
of  common  friends  he  must  have  felt  that  something  had 
befallen  us. 

I  was  no  longer  interested  in  Pater,  in  fact  I  began  to 
laugh  at  him  behind  his  back,  so  altogether  lost  did  he 
seem,  so  like  an  albatross  on  deck,  to  borrow  a  simile 
from  Baudelaire,  as  he  sat  at  the  dining-board  of  a  young 
Russian  Jew,  prepense  to  place  him,  between  two  ladies 
whose  bosoms  overflowed  their  bodices,  large  full-blown 
roses,  exchanging  peaceable  and  amiable  remarks,  doing 
his  best  to  keep  them  both  entertained.  It  became  a 
matter  of  wonderment  to  me  why  Pater  should  accept 
invitations  to  this  house  or  to  another  house  in  which 
I  used  to  meet  Pater — that  of  an  elderly  peeress  who 
liked  men  of  letters  much  as  she  liked  her  crewel  work, 
and  the  iron  she  hammered  in  a  back  room  upstairs. 
Pater  used  to  attend  her  parties,  silent,  polite,  formal, 
never  seemingly  annoyed  with  himself  for  accepting  her 
invitations  as  I  often  was,  for  the  thought  was  always  in 
my  mind  of  the  hours  I  wasted  in  these  entertainments, 
hours  that  I  might  have  spent  more  profitably  on  other 
things.  Pater's  conduct  seemed  to  be  even  more  in- 
excusable than  mine,  for  he  did  not  write  about  society. 
He  was  at  this  time  a  mystery  to  us  all,  even  to  Symons. 


AVOWALS  213 

Neither  Symons  nor  another  guessed  the  reason  why 
Pater  accepted  invitations  from  almost  everybody  who 
invited  him.  Not  one  of  us  suspected  that  he  reasoned 
with  himself  in  this  fashion:  I  have  come  to  live  in 
London,  and  to  avoid  society  while  living  in  London 
would  be  neither  decorous  nor  seemly.  It  would  be 
worse,  it  would  be  an  admission — Pater  came  to  London 
as  an  experiment.  He  wanted  to  live,  to  join  up,  to 
walk  in  step,  without,  however,  giving  himself  away,  and 
I  think  all  his  friends  experienced  a  certain  sense  of 
relief  when  they  heard  that  he  had  returned  to  Oxford. 

There  is  a  drama  in  what  I  am  writing,  that  of  a  man 
who  perhaps  sought  to  open  his  heart  to  others,  who 
wished  to  take  the  world  into  his  confidence  perhaps, 
but  who,  if  he  did,  found  himself  unable  even  for  a  single 
unaffected  friendship.  But,  as  has  been  said,  none  was 
aware  of  the  drama  that  was  unfolding  itself.  All  we 
knew  was  that  Pater  had  returned  to  Oxford,  and  we  sup- 
posed that  he  felt  Oxford  to  be  a  more  suitable  back- 
ground for  his  taste  and  genius  than  London.  Symons's 
insight  may  have  been  deeper  than  mine;  now  I  am  speak- 
ing for  myself  alone,  I  suspected  nothing.  It  was  a  little 
disturbing  that  Pater  should  have  come  to  London  and 
returned  to  Oxford,  but  I  suspected  nothing.  Why 
should  I?  I  had  lived  in  France,  left  France,  come  to 
live  in  London,  and  might  return  and  finish  my  days  in 
France!  But  one  day  something  happened  to  open  my 
eyes,  and  Pater's  soul  became  plainer.  The  editor  of 
The  Daily  Chronicle  stopped  me  in  the  Strand,  saying 
that  he  had  a  review  of  my  book  of  Modern  Painting  in 
type,  written,  he  said,  by  the  greatest  writer  in  the  world. 
Whom  you  think  the  greatest  writer  in  the  world,  I  said. 
No,  whom  you  think  the  greatest  writer  in  the  world, 
he  answered.  But  I  do  not  know  who  I  think  the  greatest 
writer  in  the  world;  tell  me.  No,  he  replied;  one  of  these 
days  you  will  see  the  name  in  the  paper,  and  you  will 


214  AVOWALS 

agree  with  me  that  the  writer  of  the  article  is  the  greatest 
writer  in  the  world. 

Sir  Henry  Norman  was  then  the  literary  editor  of  the 
Chronicle,  and  I  often  went  to  his  house  to  beg  him  to  tell 
me  who  was  the  greatest  writer  in  the  world,  but  it  was 
impossible  to  persuade  him,  and  every  morning,  after  a 
restless  night,  I  jumped  out  of  bed  to  look  for  the  arti- 
cle. Four  mornings  passed;  a  week  went  by;  another 
week.  One  morning  of  the  third  week  I  overslept  myself, 
and  awaking  suddenly,  I  said :  the  Chronicle.  Out  of  bed 
I  was  in  a  jiffy;  and  a  unique  moment  in  my  life  it  was 
when  I  caught  sight  of  the  heading,  Modern  Painting. 
Now,  I  said,  I  shall  know  who  is  the  greatest  writer  in 
the  world.  .  .  .  Walter  Pater!  The  next  thing  to  do  was 
to  read  the  article,  and  before  beginning  it  I  said:  my 
pleasure  would  have  been  greater  if  I  had  read  it  before 
looking  to  see  who  wrote  it.  However,  that  cannot  be 
helped  now.  The  article  was  good;  it  delighted  me,  like 
everything  that  Pater  wrote,  but  I  could  not  help  feeling 
that  it  did  not  compare  favourably  with  the  short  articles 
that  he  contributed  to  The  Guardian.  A  beautiful  article 
it  was,  for  it  could  not  be  else,  since  Pater  wrote  it,  the 
same  grace,  the  same  simplicity,  the  same  power  of  saying 
exactly  what  he  was  minded  to  say.  I  ought  to  be  grate- 
ful, and  I  felt  a  little  ashamed  of  myself  for  not  admiring 
the  article  more  than  I  did,  and  began  to  think  that  the 
source  of  it  lay  in  his  desire  to  acknowledge  that  I  had 
written,  as  he  put  it,  very  pleasantly  about  himself  in  The 
Confessions  of  a  Young  Man.  But  was  that  why  he  praised 
me?  Scratch  me,  and  I'll  scratch  you.  No,  Pater's  mind 
did  not  move  in  such  mediocre  honesty.  But  there  must 
be  a  reason.  Others  had  praised  Pater  more  abundantly, 
yet  he  did  not  write  about  the  books  of  everyone  who  had 
praised  him,  and  the  articles  he  wrote  for  The  Guardian 
were  unsigned,  but  this  one  was  a  signed  article.  Another 
reason,  and  a  pleasant  one  if  one  considers  it,  rose  up  in 


AVOWALS  215 

my  mind.  Pater  knew  that  I  was  disappointed  at  not 
receiving  as  much  of  his  personal  friendship  as  I  had 
wished  for,  and  wrote  this  article  as  a  way  of  recompense 
for  what  he  felt  was  my  due.  I  probed  my  fancy,  I 
dabbled  in  psychology.  But  no  better  reason  than  this 
last  one  could  I  find  for  Pater's  article — a  wish  to  please 
me,  a  wish  to  please  me.  It  must  have  been  something 
personal,  I  said.  He  did  not  review  the  book  merely 
because  it  took  his  fancy,  and  awakening  from  my  mem- 
ory, I  added:  a  letter  must  be  written  at  once,  thanking 
him.  It  was  written,  but  no  answer  came  back,  and  I 
said:  the  account  is  closed.  Pater  and  I  have  passed 
from  each  other,  but  I  did  not  guess  at  the  time  that  we 
were  about  to  be  separated  for  ever. 

A  few  months  later  Pater  died  suddenly,  and  I  said: 
now  I  shall  never  know  why  he  wrote  the  article  about 
Modern  Painting.  Years  went  by,  and  it  was  not  until 
the  other  day,  when  looking  through  The  Renaissance  I 
came  upon  the  celebrated  passage  that  I  was  guilty  of 
condemning  as  unworthy — guilty  of  condemning,  for 
what  have  I  written  that  gives  me  the  right  to  judge 
Pater?  A  greater  sinner  now  am  I  than  Gosse,  and  as  a 
punishment  for  my  sin  I  say:  I'll  read  this  passage  care- 
fully, comma  by  comma,  semicolon  by  semicolon,  full 
stop  by  full  stop.  And  this  thing  I  did,  and  rose  from  it 
understanding  Pater  as  I  had  never  understood  him  be- 
fore. Behind  the  mask,  I  said,  that  he  did  not  lift,  that 
he  could  not  lift,  was  a  shy,  sentimental  man,  all  powerful 
in  written  word,  impotent  in  life. 


CHAPTER  12. 

WE  do  not  know  how  deeply  love  has  gone  into  us 
until  death  robs  us;    till  we  have  wept  over  the 
corpse.     It  was  thus  with  me.     I  did  not  know  how  I 


216  AVOWALS 

loved  Paris  (my  Paris)  till  I  found  myself  yesterday  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  Place  Pigalle,  looking  round  for  the 
familiar  aspects  and  signs  of  the  artists  and  the  petite 
bourgeoisie  who  used  to  live  there  in  the  seventies  and 
eighties.  The  Nouvelle  Athenes,  whither  Manet,  Degas, 
Pissarro,  Debutin,  Forain,  Catulle  Mendes  and  Paul  Alexis 
used  to  come  in  the  evening;  the  beloved  cafe  in  which  I 
learned  French  and  all  I  know  of  literature  and  art  still 
poked  its  nose  out  into  the  Place,  but  how  changed! 
Now  it  is  the  tryst  of  a  ferocious  cosmopolitanism,  come 
up  from  the  Grand  Hotel,  lured  thither  by  the  promise 
of  mendacious  guides.  From  the  Nouvelle  Athenes  I 
crossed  over  to  Rat  Mort,  le  cafe  en  face;  it  too  had  been 
transformed  and  commercialised,  with  the  house  by  it  in 
which  Fromentin  lived,  a  capable  painter,  and  one  of 
the  most  beautiful  writers  of  French  prose  (I  used  to  see 
him  walking  across  the  Place  in  the  morning,  looking  like 
an  Arab,  having  become  like  the  Arabs  from  long  residence 
in  the  desert),  turned  into  a  restaurant  to  which  tourists 
come  to  dine  with  their  guides  and  are  taken  by  them  to 
the  Moulin  Rouge  to  see  a  few  women  dancing  for  hire, 
for  even  gaiety  has  been  commercialised,  I  said;  and  fell 
to  thinking  of  La  Reine  Blanche  and  La  Boule  Notre, 
two  dear  little  bals,  only  known  to  the  Montmartre  kin, 
to  the  workgirls  and  their  swains,  les  voyous  du  quartier, 
bals  whose  names  recall  absinthe,  and  La  Valse  des  Roses 
blared  on  a  cornet. 

And  as  I  stood  watching  the  pretty  patterns  that  the 
dangling  leaves  cast  about  me  a  memory  of  the  Boule 
Noire  came  back,  a  memory,  not  of  the  bal,  but  the  restau- 
rant: I  have  brought  you  your  wife's  letters,  and  have 
the  honour  to  inform  you  that  she  spent  last  night  with 
me,  said  a  short,  thick-set  young  man  in  a  deep  bass  voice. 
He  had  come  into  the  restaurant  some  while  after  a  wed- 
ding party  had  passed  up  the  stairs  to  the  saloons  in 
which  all  the  weddings  of  the  quartier  feasted  on  their  re- 


AVOWALS  217 

turn  from  Church,  parties  of  a  dozen  or  fifteen  small 
tradesmen  in  their  Sunday  best,  and  in  their  midst  the 
bride,  in  white  lace  and  orange  blossoms,  with,  as  Huys- 
mans  would  remark,  a  look  of  greedy  anticipation  on  her 
face  at  the  pleasure  that  had  been  prepared  for  her,  her 
dress,  the  breakfast,  the  cake,  the  drive  to  Bois,  and,  of 
all,  the  pleasure  of  being  broached.  The  young  man,  who 
had  come  into  the  restaurant,  addressed  the  waiter  hur- 
riedly, asking  if  a  wedding  party  had  gone  upstairs,  and 
the  waiter,  believing  him  to  be  one  of  the  guests,  offered 
to  conduct  him.  But  he  seated  himself  at  a  table  and 
called  for  a  vermouth,  which  he  sat  sipping  moodily,  so  it 
seemed  to  the  guests  and  to  the  waiters  who,  after  the 
event,  conferred  together,  and  it  was  remembered  that  a 
certain  accent  of  nervous  irritation  had  transpired  in  his 
voice  when  the  waiter  answered  his  call,  bill-of-fare 
hand :  Quand  je  serai  pret  a  dejeuner  je  vous  demanderai 
la  carte.  Encore  un  vermouth.  It  seemed  to  me  (after- 
wards of  course)  that  the  waiter  suspected  something,  and 
that  it  could  not  have  been  else  than  that  the  man  was 
brooding  a  mischief  while  he  sat  drinking  glass  after  glass 
of  vermouth;  for  three  glasses  of  vermouth  before  break- 
fast are  very  unusual. 

As  soon  as  the  wedding-party  was  heard  coming  down 
the  stairs,  he  jumped  to  his  feet,  and  then  I  knew  some- 
thing was  going  to  happen.  The  dining  saloon  was  trav- 
ersed by  a  laurel  hedge  designed  to  protect  the  wedding- 
parties  from  the  scrutiny  of  the  casual  visitor,  but  between 
the  leaves  something  of  what  happened  appeared,  some- 
thing of  the  cool  effrontery  with  which  the  young  fellow 
addressed  the  bridegroom.  I  have  brought  you  your  wife's 
letters,  and  have  the  honour  to  inform  you  that  she  spent 
last  night  with  me.  The  bridegroom  had  no  time  to  collect 
his  wits;  no  cane  was  raised  to  strike,  I  am  sure  of  that; 
no  further  words  were  spoken.  A  tragedy  seemed  to  fall 
and  to  melt,  and  before  we  realised  what  had  happened 


218  AVOWALS 

we  saw  the  bride  going  away  with  her  friends  to  the  left, 
and  the  bridegroom  with  his  to  the  right.  The  wedding- 
party  vanished  like  a  dream,  including  the  vermouth 
drinker,  almost  as  suddenly  as  a  dream;  and  the  waiter's 
words,  as  he  cleared  the  table,  float  back  over  the  storms 
of  forty  years :  Heureusement  je  lui  ai  fait  payer  les  trois 
vermouths.  Curiously  reminiscent,  are  they  not,  of 
Leperello's  last  words:   Mes  gages,  mes  gages? 

The  Elysee  Montmartre  is  not  less  memorable  than  the 
Boule  Noire :  it  was  there  I  met  and  talked  with  the  great 
Tourgueneff:  for  his  words  the  curious  are  referred  to 
Impressions  and  Opinions.  The  Bal  too  still  continues 
a  precarious  existence,  sometimes  it  is  open,  sometimes  it 
is  in  bankruptcy.  But  how  can  it  continue,  I  said,  since 
the  artists  and  the  grisettes  have  gone?  The  restaurant 
of  Pere  Lathuille,  in  which  Manet  painted  his  celebrated 
picture;  that  too  is  a  memory.  And  the  Cirque  Fer- 
nando, an  old  haunt  of  mine  and  of  Alexis's — was  not  the 
heroine  of  his  witty  comedy,  Monsieur  Betsy,  an  ecuyere 
of  that  circus? — has  disappeared,  and  in  its  place  I  saw 
a  row  of  new  houses,  iron  girders  covered  with  a  little 
lath  and  plaster,  through  which  the  lodgers  hear  every 
sound  and  divine  smells  from  sounds.  Modern  comforts 
are  provided,  no  doubt — bathrooms!  we  washed  less  in 
the  seventies,  but  we  wrote  better  and  painted  better;  and 
leaving  the  point  undecided  whether  art  and  cleanliness 
are  incompatible,  I  turned  into  the  Rue  Laval,  now 
called  Rue  de  Victor  Masse,  my  feet  finding  their  way 
instinctively  into  the  Rue  Pigalle,  and  from  thence  into 
the  Rue  de  Douai,  where  Ludovic  Halevy  once  lived,  in 
that  house  yonder,  No.  22.  It  was  there  I  used  to  meet 
Reyer,  Meilhac  and  Degas.  But  a  great  deal  of  memory 
would  be  required  to  mention  all  the  celebrities  that  I 
once  met  in  that  house — celebrities  of  a  celebrated  age 
— or  to  give  any  adequate  idea  of  the  elation  that  a 
young  man  feels  at  finding  himself  at  last  in  the  very 


AVOWALS  219 

centre  of  Parisian  society.  How  the  noise  of  the  street 
has  increased,  I  said,  and  for  it  Halevy  left  it,  a  few 
months  before  his  death.  No  man  of  letters  will  live 
there  again. 

At  the  bottom  of  the  Rue  des  Martyrs  there  was  once,  I 
remembered,  an  old-fashioned  restaurant,  Le  Faisan  Dore, 
and  after  passing  the  Place  Saint  Georges,  I  turned  to  the 
left  to  see  if  it  still  existed.  It  too  was  among  the  gone, 
and  I  passed  by  the  Church  of  Notre  Dame  de  Lorette,  a 
church  that  I  had  passed  by  a  thousand  times  in  the 
seventies  (I  must  have  passed  it  as  often  as  that,  for  my 
way  home  led  by  it)  without  ever  experiencing  any  faint- 
est inclination  to  look  inside  it.  But  now  curiosity  almost 
prevailed,  for  only  churches  remain  unchanged.  The 
great  boulevards  had  changed  as  much  as  the  Boulevard 
Exterieur.  It  is  many  years  since  Tortoni  passed  away, 
and  of  its  company  few  are  left,  but  the  little  circle  of 
chairs  round  the  corner  of  the  Rue  Taitbout  is  fixed  in  the 
minds  of  the  remnant,  and  all  of  them  filled  by  the  great 
artists  of  thirty  years  ago.  At  five  o'clock  in  the  after- 
noon Tortoni  was  a  pious  observance,  the  fulfilment  of 
the  Parisian  day;  our  rule,  our  practice,  and  our  pride. 
Manet  was  often  there,  Charpentier  always,  Scholl  too 
— Scholl  the  terrible  chroniqueur,  whose  wit  everyone 
dreaded.  But  where  is  the  Cafe  Anglais?  Gone !  Of  the 
Cafe  Riche  only  the  name  survives,  brought  up  to  date; 
all  white  paint  and  gold,  a  dazzle  of  electric  light  wherein 
a  band  improvises  the  same  piteous  pieces  evening  after 
evening. 

Everyone  who  knew  Paris  thirty  years  ago,  and  who 
knows  it  to-day,  however  superficially,  knows  that  cafe 
life  is  over  in  Paris.  There  are  no  more  cafes  for  the 
Parisians.  Catulle  was  the  last  that  was  faithful  to  his 
cafe;  till  the  day  of  his  death  he  sat  in  the  Cafe  Napolitan 
over  yonder,  surrounded  by  followers  and  friends,  and  out 
of  respect  for  his  memory  I  crossed  the  boulevard  and 


220  AVOWALS 

sought  for  a  chair  in  his  corner.  But  all  were  occupied, 
and  by  whom?  By  a  strange  nondescript  crowd  from  all 
parts  of  the  globe.  Yea,  truly,  Paris  is  changed.  There 
are  no  more  Parisians,  I  said,  and  continued  my  medita- 
tive walk,  noticing  as  I  went  how  much  the  streets  had 
suffered  from  modern  taste — almost  every  street,  the  Rue 
de  la  Paix,  perhaps,  most  of  all.  Among  modern  mon- 
strosities the  Hotel  Mirabeau  takes  first  place  easily.  A 
marble  front  in  variegated  marbles,  and  a  marble  hall  in 
which  I  am  not  sure  that  a  fountain  does  not  play,  can 
be  imagined  by  my  readers,  and  very  little  common-sense 
is  required  to  understand  how  its  cheap  grandeur  conflicts 
with  the  solid  and  excellent  architecture  of  the  Place 
Vendome,  one  of  the  distinctions  in  Europe,  protected, 
it  is  true,  against  progress  by  une  servitude — that  is  to  say, 
a  limit  is  put  upon  the  heights  of  the  buildings.  High 
roofs  showed  against  a  clear  September  sky  as  I  passed  by 
the  dark  slates  contracting  with  the  blue  glitter.  The 
architecture  of  the  Rue  Castiglione  is  First  Empire, 
houses  of  three  stories  high,  with  small  garrets  making  a 
fourth  story,  and  these  garrets  are  in  beautiful  proportion 
with  the  windows  and  the  doorways  and  the  width  of  the 
street.  La  servitude  still  holds  good  there,  the  stone  can- 
not be  touched,  but  in  one  place  a  high  garret  has  been 
added,  and  it  is  in  such  flagrant  violation  of  all  proportion 
that  one  turns  away  thinking  that  sense  of  proportion  has 
left  the  world  for  ever.  Other  things  have  come,  railways 
and  motor  cars,  perhaps  aeroplanes,  but  for  better  or 
worse  a  sense  has  been  lost,  that  of  proportion,  I  muttered, 
as  I  crossed  the  street  into  the  Tuileries  Gardens,  pro- 
pelled by  a  sudden  thought,  for  Manet  had  painted  a 
crowd  of  Third  Empire  notorieties  under  the  trees:  the 
women  in  bonnets  and  crinolines,  the  men  in  braided  coats 
and  trousers  and  chimney-pot  hats.  In  those  days  there 
was  a  mode.  No  one  now  goes  to  the  Tuileries  but 
nurserymaids  and  children.    In  the  old  days  the  children 


AVOWALS  221 

went  with  their  mothers;  there  are  two  in  Manet's  fore- 
ground, scratching  amid  the  gravel,  and  when  Sir  Hugh 
Lane,  who  had  been  knighted  according  to  Sickert  for 
admiring  Manet,  stood  in  front  of  this  picture  explaining 
to  Steer  that  the  woman  in  the  blue  bonnet  was  La 
Marquise  de  Gallifet,  and  the  woman  in  the  yellow  gown 
La  Comtesse  de  Castiglione,  and  the  man  talking  to  her 
Le  Prince — Steer,  gently  interrupting,  said:  And  the  two 
children  in  pink  and  blue  frocks  are,  I  suppose,  Ricketts 
and  Shannon,  an  excellent  joke,  but  one  which  will  not 
be  appreciated  outside  of  certain  studios. 

But  there  are  gardens  with  which  my  past  is  more 
intimately  associated  than  that  of  the  Tuileries — Bullier! 
and  wondering  if  the  commercialisation  of  my  beloved 
city  would  end  with  the  Rue  de  Rivoli,  I  crossed  the  Seine. 
Have  the  bookstalls  gone  too?  I  asked  myself.  No; 
there  are  still  bookstalls,  and  the  quays  seem  much  the 
same.     At  last,  I  said,  I  am  coming  to  Paris. 

And  in  the  Rue  du  Bac  everybody  was  speaking  French. 
It  was  pleasant  to  hear  the  familiar  language  after  the 
babble  of  foreign  tongues  in  Rue  de  Rivoli.  And  there 
were  women  in  peignoirs,  too,  with  baskets  on  their  arms 
buying  things  in  the  shops.  This  is  Paris,  I  said,  the 
Paris  that  I  knew  long  ago.  The  faces  too  were  French, 
and  scanning  them  eagerly  as  I  went  by,  feeling  myself 
almost  a  phantom,  I  turned  into  the  great  street  which 
leads  to  the  Theatre  de  FOdeon,  the  Rue — I  will  not 
attempt  the  name.  Sometimes  we  forget  the  name  of  a 
street  in  which  we  know  the  aspects  of  every  house,  but 
the  belly  remembers  when  the  head  forgets,  and  I  could 
not  do  else  than  look  across  the  way  for  the  Restaurant 
Foyot.  It  was  where  it  ever  was,  but  it  was  still  too  early 
to  think  about  omelettes,  and  after  passing  round  the  gal- 
leries of  the  theatre  I  came  upon  a  long-haired  student 
loitering  in  the  Rue  Vaugirard,  reading,  I  said,  as  he 
walks. 


m  AVOWALS 

Si  vous  §tes  du  Quartier  Latin  peut-etre  .  .  .  and  from 
him  I  learned  the  almost  unwelcome  news  that  Bullier 
was  not  going  to  be  pulled  down,  but  rehabilitated  with 
all  sorts  of  new  splendours,  and  attractions.  It  only 
means,  I  answered,  that  the  fate  of  the  Quartier  Latin 
will  be  the  same  as  Montmartre,  and  after  five  minutes' 
talk  we  bade  each  other  good-bye.  His  way  was  to  the 
Sorbonne,  mine  to  the  Luxembourg  Gardens,  and  the  sad, 
romantic  air  of  these  gardens  helped  me  to  view  indul- 
gently an  old  priest  reading  his  breviary  in  the  sun,  and 
to  adjust  my  mind  to  Julian  who,  when  on  his  way  to 
make  war  on  the  Persians,  found  all  the  temples  in  ruins, 
and  no  trace  of  the  ancient  worship  left  except  one  old 
priest  with  a  goose  in  his  lap,  which  he  had  come  to  offer 
in  sacrifice.  Very  soon  I  came  upon  Pierrot,  escaped  from 
some  studio,  eating  his  breakfast,  sharing  it  with  the 
sparrows,  and  a  little  further  on  three  young  women  went 
by,  nuns,  walking  amid  the  falling  leaves.  One  passed 
suddenly  in  front  of  the  others,  and  with  a  quick,  dancing 
step  reached  out  her  hand  to  catch  a  leaf,  and  the  spec- 
tacle of  this  group  of  three  had  not  passed  out  of  my 
mind  when  I  caught  sight  of  a  strange,  big  fellow,  a 
countryman  he  seemed,  come  up  from  the  country  in  his 
Sunday  best,  sitting  in  a  sunny  corner,  his  face  covered 
with  his  hands,  in  an  attitude  of  such  deep  dejection  or  of 
philosophic  calm  that  I  repeated  a  line  heard  over  night 
in  the  theatre: 

II  songe  aux  bles  fauches  qu'on  ne  fauchera  plus,  a  last 
attempt  to  sentimentalise  the  tramp.  Plutot:  II  songe 
aux  pains  manges  qu'on  ne  mangera  plus.  Voila  le  vrai 
Chemineau;  and  while  considering  the  emptiness  of  the 
line,  which  all  the  same  fell  in  somehow  with  my  senti- 
mental mood,  I  continued  my  search  for  a  piece  of  monu- 
mented  wall,  hidden  in  the  shadow  of  trees,  but  not 
finding  it  where  I  expected  to  find  it,  an  appeal  for  di- 
rection was  made  to  the  limonadier,  who  explained  my 


AVOWALS  223 

mistake,  while  I  drank,  so  clearly,  that  soon  after  I  found 
the  great  Neptune,  who,  as  of  yore,  poured  water  from 
his  urn  in  the  cool  recesses  of  the  stonework.  It  was 
pleasant  to  find  that  the  naiad  had  not  escaped  from  her 
young  man,  nor  he  from  her;  they  embraced  as  eagerly  as 
of  yore.  Art  alone  is  eternal,  I  said;  the  bust  outlasts  the 
city.  Red  leaves  are  falling  into  the  basin,  and  the  carp 
hangs  motionless  in  the  still  water,  a  little  redder  than  the 
leaves.  How  beautiful  all  this  is,  I  continued,  and  how 
beautiful  yon  roofs,  high  pitched  against  the  glitter.  Our 
word  castle  evokes  only  images  of  moats  and  portcullises 
and  rough  life;  but  the  French  word  chateau  is  evocative 
of  the  great  kings  of  France;  as  we  say  it  we  see  their 
curled  wigs  flowing  over  their  shoulders,  their  gold-headed 
canes  in  their  hands,  and  about  them  are  many  beautiful 
women  in  hooped  skirts  that  match  the  balustraded 
parterres.  But  the  great  monarchical  epoch  has  passed 
away,  cried  I,  the  castle  is  now  a  museum,  the  property 
of  the  public;  and  the  thought  that  it  might  be  wise  to 
renew  acquaintance  with  certain  pictures  was  brushed 
aside,  the  day  was  much  too  beautiful  to  see  pictures,  and 
the  Ministre  des  Beaux  Arts  has  collected  too  much  bad 
sculpture  in  his  gallery,  so  I  remained  outside,  admiring 
the  high-pitched  roofs  and  the  balustraded  parterres  full 
of  autumn  flowers:  for  a  few  more  days,  geraniums, 
begonias,  dahlias,  will  hang  over  the  edges  of  the  vases. 
One  or  two  or  three  more  weeks  of  sunny  weather,  and 
then  winter.  But  why,  alas?  Is  it  not  strange  that  we 
cannot  enjoy  things  as  they  go  by,  glad  that  nothing,  not 
even  ourselves,  is  with  us  always,  for  how  weary  we 
should  be  of  all  we  see  and  hear,  and  of  ourselves  too,  if 
we,  like  them,  were  else  than  passengers.  And  it  was  at 
that  moment  of  philosophical  reflection  that  the  man  who 
had  seemed  to  me  a  few  minutes  before  to  be  thinking  of 
Les  USs  fauchSs  qu'on  ne  fauchera  plus  passed  me  by, 
walking  with  a  subdued  air,  like  one  absorbed  in  some 


224  AVOWALS 

deep  sorrow,  like  a  man  so  indifferent  to  the  things  of  this 
world  that  the  next  has  ceased  to  interest  him.  A  great 
sorrow  certainly  is  on  him,  I  said.  But  he  is  not  a  peas- 
ant: a  mechanic,  more  likely,  come  up  in  his  Sunday 
best;  and  while  considering  his  clothes,  roughly  cut,  in 
black  broadcloth,  the  large  sombre  hat  that  almost  hid  his 
dark-complexioned  face  from  me,  which  set  me  thinking 
of  the  tropics — a  colonist  from  Algeria,  I  said;  and  be- 
lieving my  guess  to  be  a  good  one  I  hastened  my  pace, 
pausing  when  I  overtook  him  so  that  he  might  speak  to 
me  if  he  wished.  But  he  showed  no  inclination  to  avail 
himself  of  the  opportunity  to  escape  from  himself;  nor 
did  his  aloofness  abate  when  we  crossed  each  other  later; 
he  passed  on,  a  broad-shouldered  man,  whose  only  desire 
seemed  to  be  to  pace  by  himself  with  hanging  head,  with- 
out a  thought  for  the  passers-by  or  the  different  aspects 
of  the  Gardens.  Then  feeling  that  I  must  make  the  ad- 
vances I  addressed  to  him  one  of  those  questions  with 
which  we  try  to  beguile  a  fellow-traveller  into  conversa- 
tion, for  a  traveller  he  was  like  myself,  though  he  may 
have  only  come  up  from  Fontainebleu.  My  question  may 
have  been  no  more  than  to  be  told  the  time  of  day,  or 
which  is  the  way  to  the  picture  gallery;  whatever  it  was, 
the  traveller  answered  it  in  a  tone  that  encouraged  further 
remarks;  and  we  walked  through  the  Gardens  together, 
looking  at  the  statues  and  talking  on  various  subjects, 
as  men  do  on  such  occasions  until  the  spring  of  a  mutual 
interest  discovers  each  to  the  other.  My  curiosity  in 
the  man  was  to  learn  if  he  were  a  traveller,  and  before 
we  came  back  to  the  Neptune  and  the  naiad  I  had  learned 
from  him  that  he  was  a  Breton  and  had  spent  many 
years  in  Panama — a  surveyor,  an  engineer,  something 
of  that  sort,  one  of  the  many  who  had  gone  out  with 
Lesseps;  his  two  brothers  had  been  with  him  on  the 
isthmus  and  he  had  left  them  there;  and  himself  had  only 
just  escaped  death  by  a  miracle,  for  he  had  been  out  in  the 


AVOWALS  225 

bush,  devoured  by  fever  for  two  days  and  without  water. 
It  was  not  till  the  third  day  he  had  succeeded  in  reaching 
the  encampment.  It  seemed  a  gracious  thing  to  do  to 
lead  him  round  to  where  the  limonadier  was  stationed, 
and  he  allowed  me  to  offer  him  some  of  the  harmless  drinks 
that  were  on  sale;  he  ate  some  cakes,  and  I  gathered  that 
there  were  misfortunes  of  a  personal  kind,  and  from  a 
slight  hint  concluded  that  his  married  life  had  not  been 
happy,  but  I  lacked  courage  to  probe  him  with  any  direct 
question;  and  was  not  able  to  discover  his  religious  views, 
only  that  he  clung  to  his  religion,  for  without  some  hope, 
he  said,  of  a  future  life,  this  would  be  intolerable,  and  he 
would  lack  courage  to  start  forth  again  to  Panama,  this 
time  to  work  with  the  Americans  who  had  undertaken  the 
work  that  Lesseps  had  not  been  able  to  carry  through. 
But  how,  I  asked  him  will  your  desire  to  believe  in  things 
that  you  know  are  not  true  help  you  to  live  among  things 
that  at  least  seem  true?  He  answered  me  hesitatingly, 
like  one  who  is  not  accustomed  to  look  into  his  own  soul 
and  to  tell  what  is  there.  A  pained  expression  stole  into 
his  face  and  I  began  to  regret  my  question,  and  was  glad 
when  he  said:  you  do  not  seem  to  have  suffered  as  I  have; 
your  life  has  been  a  happy  one.  How  do  you  know  that? 
I  asked.  Your  face  tells  me;  you  have  a  happy  face.  Do 
you  think,  then,  that  I  am  indifferent  to  the  sadness  of  this 
September  sunlight?  You  are  aware,  he  said,  of  the  sad- 
ness inherent  in  things  and  you  indulge  in  this  sadness, 
for  it  is  your  pleasure. 

Once  more  I  tried  to  tempt  him  into  his  life's  story, 
but  he  wavered  on  the  brink,  and  instead  of  telling  it  he 
asked  me  to  tell  him  why  I  was  in  Paris,  and  I  answered 
that  I  had  come  to  Paris  to  give  a  lecture  on  Shakespeare 
and  Balzac,  to  which  he  replied  that  he  would  like  to  come 
to  hear  my  lecture.  But  my  lecture  may  never  be  given, 
and  in  reply  to  his  questions  I  told  him  that  although  the 
lecture  was  written,  and  the  manuscript  in  my  pocket,  I 


AVOWALS 

dreaded  the  delivery  of  it  more  than  anything  in  the 
world,  for  the  Director  of  the  Revue  Bleue,  who  had  or- 
ganised the  series  of  lectures,  of  which  mine  was  one,  was 
of  opinion  that  I  was  a  very  bad  reader.  You  read  much 
too  fast,  he  said.  The  ideas  expressed  in  your  lecture  are 
ingenious  and  interesting,  and  the  writing  of  it,  though 
not  exactly  that  of  a  Frenchman,  is  sufficient.  As  for  the 
English  accent,  that  is  part  of  the  entertainment,  but 
what  I  would  have  you  conquer  is  the  tendency  to  read 
too  fast.  But  last  night  I  heard  Racine  spouted  at  the 
rate  of  three  hundred  words  a  minute.  We  know  Racine 
by  heart,  he  replied;  if  we  didn't  we  should  not  under- 
stand a  word  the  actor  said.  I  confided  to  my  casual  ac- 
quaintance that  it  was  very  hard  to  read  slowly;  and 
there  are  other  defects.  I  do  not,  I  said,  make  all  the 
liaisons,  and  I  sometimes  make  wrong  liaisons,  what  you 
call  in  French  des  cuirs.  WThen  do  you  give  your  lecture? 
he  asked.  At  the  end  of  the  week,  I  answered,  and  we 
are  now  at  the  beginning  of  it.  I  shall  not  be  here,  for 
to-morrow  I  start  for  Panama,  but  it  would  be  a  pleasure 
to  me  to  hear  your  lecture.  A  more  quiet  and  secluded 
spot  to  read  than  the  one  we  are  in  could  not  be  found. 

It  seemed  unkind,  almost  unseemly,  to  refuse  to  grant 
the  traveller's  simple  request,  and  in  other  circumstances, 
no  doubt,  I  should  have  granted  it.  But  a  plan  whereby 
my  difficulty  might  be  overcome  had  just  come  into  my 
mind,  and  to  excuse  myself  for  not  reading  my  lecture  to 
him,  I  unfolded  it.  Some  years  ago,  three  or  four,  at 
dinner,  in  the  house  of  a  rich  American  woman,  I  found 
myself  placed  next  to  a  pretty,  vivacious  Frenchwoman, 
whose  talk  and  whose  manner  of  talking  reminded  me  of 
something  I  could  not  call  to  mind  at  the  moment;  and 
surprised  that  she  could  distinguish  between  my  accent  in 
French  and  our  hostess's,  I  was  prompted  to  ask  her  if 
she  had  ever  acted  and  cared  for  acting.  She  answered 
evasively,  and  as  my  question  seemed  to  amuse  the  com- 


AVOWALS  227 

pany  I  pursued  my  neighbour  with  questions  a  little  longer, 
without  getting  a  favourable  answer;  and  it  was  not  till 
some  days  later  I  learned  that  the  lady  who  sat  next  me 
at  dinner  was  the  celebrated  Mademoiselle  Richenberg, 
to  whom  I  wrote  an  apology,  which  was  very  well  received, 
and  I  did  not  fail  to  express  my  surprise  to  my  friends 
that  they  should  not  have  informed  me  that  Madame  la 

Baronne  de was  Mademoiselle  Richenberg.    Now,  I 

said,  turning  to  the  traveller,  it  has  come  into  my  mind 
that  my  best  chance  of  learning  how  to  read  my  lecture 
will  be  to  go  and  see  Mademoiselle  Richenberg,  and  tell 
her  of  my  trouble,  and  if  she  has  a  kind  heart  she  will 
say:  you  cannot  be  allowed  to  go  back  to  London  with- 
out giving  your  lecture,  I  will  teach  you  how  to  read  it. 
A  very  excellent  idea  that  is,  returned  the  traveller,  and 
I  cannot  blame  you  for  availing  yourself  of  it.  But  could 
you  not  spare  me  half-an-hour?  It  would  take  an  hour  to 
read  my  lecture;  I'm  afraid  I  cannot,  I  answered,  feeling 
ashamed  of  myself  for  declining  to  grant  the  traveller  the 
simple  pleasure  he  was  seeking.  But  the  thought  was  in 
my  mind:  he  has  passed  a  pleasant  morning  with  me, 
forgetful  for  the  moment  of  the  sorrow  that  presses  upon 
him,  but  will  suffer  greater  pain  when  I  leave  him,  for  were 
pain  continuous  it  would  soon  cease  to  be  pain.  So  in  his 
own  interest  I  must  leave  him.  But  why,  said  I,  are  you 
going  back  to  Panama?  Can  you  not  find  something  here? 
I  am  a  foreigner,  he  added,  in  my  native  land.  What 
could  I  do  here?  Good-bye,  and  thank  you  for  a  very 
pleasant  morning,  little  did  I  think  that  I  was  to  pass  so 
pleasant  an  hour  when  I  went  out  this  morning.  Good- 
bye, sir. 


228  AVOWALS 


CHAPTER  13. 


Mesdames,  Messeeures, 

Vous  etes  venus  ici  pleins  d' indulgence,  j'en  suis  sur, 
car  vous  etes  venus  sachant  que  vous  alliez  entendre 
parler  un  barbare,  autrement  dit  un  bredouilleur.  Vous 
souvenez  que  le  mot  grec  Bappapos  peut  etre  traduit  en 
frangais  par  le  mot  bredouilleur,  et  vous  n'attendez  pas 
autre  chose  de  moi  qu'un  bredouillage  frangais,  quoique 
vous  sachiez  bien  que  mes  ancetres  parlaient  bien  la 
frangais  jadis,  au  temps  de  Guillaume  le  Conquerant  et 
pendant  deus  cents  ans  apres.  Ce  n'est  qu'au  xiv*mo 
siecle  que  nous  sommes  de  venus  des  barbares.  Le  fait  est 
incontestable.  II  a  ete  raconte  par  Chaucer  en  ces  vers 
que  tout  le  monde  connait  chez  nous: 

And  French  she  spoke  both  fair  and  fetishly 
It  was  the  French  of  Stratford  att6  Bowe 
For  French  of  Paris  was  to  her  unknowe. 

Permettez-moi  de  traduire: 

Elle  parlait  le  francais  joliment  et  gentiment 
C'etait  le  frangais  de  Stratford  att6  Bowe 
Car  le  frangais  de  Paris  lui  etait  inconnu. 

Ce  jargon  usite  a  Stratford  atte  Bowe  dont  parlait  le 
pere  de  notre  litterature  est  done  fort  ancien;  mais, 
malgre  son  grand  age,  il  n'est  pas  mort;  au  contraire  il 
est  plus  repandu  que  jamais,  surtout  parmi  les  gens  qui 
frequentent  les  salons  de  Mayfair.  Des  qu'un  Parisien 
entre  dans  un  salon  a  Londres,  chacun  cherche  a  placer 
ses  moindres  souvenirs  de  votre  langue,  et  nos  meilleurs 
romanciers  ne  peuvent  se  passer  des  lieux  communs 
frangais,  croyant  alleger  ainsi  le  poids  de  leurs  ceuvres. 
Cet  effort  atteint  son  apogee,  quand  un  auteur  de  chez 
nous  peut  ecrire  quelques  vers,  ou  faire  une  dedicace 
en  frangais,  et  il  est  vrai  que  quelques  uns  de  nos  auteurs 


AVOWALS  229 

ont  hesite  entre  leur  langue  maternelle  et  le  jargon. 
Le  premier  livre  de  notre  grand  ecrivain  Gibbon  fut  ecrit 
en  frangais.  Swinburne,  le  grand  poete,  qui  est  mort 
Pannee  derniere,  a  publie  de  la  prose  et  des  vers  en  fran- 
gais. Mais  il  n'y  a  rien  d'extraordinaire  qu'il  en  soit 
ainsi,  car  votre  langue  fut  greffee  sur  l'Anglo-Saxon  au 
onzieme  siecle;  la  peche  greffee  sur  le  prunier  produit  le 
brugnon  que  certains  preferent  a  tort  aux  fruits  originaux; 
vous  voyez  comment  la  culture  de  ma  langue  s'explique 
genttment  sans  trop  d'erudition.  Et  les  livres  dont  je 
viens  de  vous  parler  et  la  conference  que  vous  etes  venus 
entendre  ne  sont  pas  autre  chose  qu'un  retour  au  passe, 
les  derniers  rejetons  du  vieux  tronc  frangais.  J'avoue  que 
je  ne  puis  expliquer  avec  la  meme  aisance  le  frangais  des 
ecrivains  des  autres  nations,  et  je  cherche  encore  sans 
pouvoir  le  decouvir  le  motif  pour  lequel  Frederic  de  Prusse 
fit  venir  Voltaire  a,  Berlin  pour  corriger  ses  vers,  pourquoi 
le  grand  Tourgueneff  a  traduit  lui-meme  plusieurs  de  ses 
contes,  et  pourquoi  il  y  a  dans  les  pays  les  moins  civilises 
des  gens  qui  font  des  vers  dans  votre  langue.  Je  suis  cer- 
tain que  Ton  pourrait  envoyer  en  vain  des  reporters  en 
Siberie  et  en  Patagonie:  les  poetes  la-bas  ne  savent  pas 
plus  que  moi  pourquoi  ils  ecrivent  en  frangais.  lis  sont 
pousses  par  un  besoin  plus  fort  que  la  raison,  car  ils  se 
rendent  tres  bien  compte  qu'ils  ne  savent  pas  votre  langue 
et  qu'ils  ne  la  sauront  jamais.  Tout  ce  qu'on  peut  faire 
est  d'apprendre  une  langue,  et  la  langue  que  nous  appre- 
nons  ne  nous  explique  point  comme  la  langue  que  nous 
connaissons  d'instinct!  Elle  ne  devient  jamais  tout  a 
fait  maternelle;  elle  reste,  si  j'ose  m'exprimer  ainsi,  une 
maratre — une  maratre  pas  trop  terrible.  La  preuve  en 
est  que  je  suis  venu  ici,  tente  par  Toccasion,  de  parler 
frangais  devant  un  public  d'elite.  Songez  quelle  joie 
pour  un  barbare,  et  en  meme  temps  quel  emoi! 

Puisque  vous  savez  maintenant  pourquoi  je  suis  ici,  il 
me  semble  bon  de  vous  dire  pourquoi  j*ai  choisi  Balzac  et 


230  AVOWALS 

Shakespeare  comme  sujet  de  cette  conference.  L' associa- 
tion de  ces  deux  noms  peut  vous  sembler  saugrenue,  et 
sans  doute  plus  d'un  d'entre  vous  s'est  deja  demande 
pourquoi  j'ai  attele  ensemble  un  romancier  et  un  poete. 
Assurement  deux  romanciers  auraient  mieux  valu:  Balzac 
et  Thackeray,  Balzac  et  Dickens,  Balzac  et  Walter  Scott. 
Mais,  en  reflechissant  bien,  vous  penserez  comme  moi 
j'espere,  qu'il  est  impossible  d'associer  l'aimable  carica- 
turiste  qu'est  Dickens,  le  badaud  de  Piccadilly  qu'est 
Thackeray,  et  le  collectionneur  d'antiquites  qu'est  Walter 
Scott,  avec  le  grand  penseur  qu'est  Balzac.  II  faudrait 
un  equivalent,  et  les  noms  de  Hardy,  Stevenson  et  Mere- 
dith me  sont  sont  venus. . . .  Que  faire  avec  eux?  II  n'y  en 
a  pas  un  qui  aille  a  la  cheville  de  Balzac  parmi  les  plus 
modernes,  non  plus  que  parmi  les  anciens.  Alors  j'ai 
renonce  a  l'idee  d'accepter  l'invitation  de  la  Revue  Bleue. 
Un  moment  apres,  je  me  suis  souvenuquelapenseeanglaise 
se  trouve  dans  la  poesie  plutot  que  dans  la  prose.  Words- 
worth, Shelley,  Keats,  Byron  ont  beaucoup  pense,  mais 
ils  sont  des  poetes  lyriques  qui  n'ont  rien  de  commun 
avec  la  ComSdie  Humaine,  et  il  me  f allait  un  grand  evoca- 
teur  d'ames.  Alors  Shakespeare  m'est  apparu,  et  je  me 
suis  dit  qu'il  represente  l'Angleterre  comme  Balzac  repre- 
sente  la  France.  Je  n'ai  pas  eu  a  chercher  plus  loin,  ma 
conference  etait  trouvee. 

Le  jour  ou  ces  deux  noms  se  mirent  a  tinter  dans  mes 
oreilles,  je  me  suis  dit  que  si,  par  hasard,  c'etait  la  destinee 
de  la  France  d'etre  engloutie  sous  les  eaux,  le  mal  ne 
serait  pas  si  grand,  si  les  ceuvres  de  Balzac  surnageaient, 
car  nous  autres  Anglais  nous  aurions  un  document  dans 
lequel  nous  pourrions  lire  la  vie  et  le  genie  de  nos  voisions. 
Si,  au  contraire,  c'etait  l'Angleterre  qui  devait  disparaitre, 
et  si  rien  ne  restait  d'elle  que  les  drames  de  Shakespeare, 
vous  auriez,  vous  aussi,  un  document  dans  lequel  vous 
pourriez  lire  notre  histoire,  et  vous  auriez  un  echantillon 
extraordinaire  de  notre  art,  car  chaque  pays  a  son  art,  et 


AVOWALS  231 

Tart  de  l'Angleterre  est  las  poesie,  comme  Tart  de  la 
Grece  est  las  sculpture.  En  disant  cela,  vous  ne  ma  pren- 
drez  pas,  j'espere,  pour  un  chauvin  litteraire;  je  tache 
d'approacher  autant  que  possible  de  la  verite,  et  certes  je 
n'exagere  pas  en  disant  que  Balzac  et  Shakespeare  ont 
mis  nos  deux  pays  hors  du  temps  et  de  la  catastrophe. 
Grace  a  eux,  ils  ne  seront  jamais  tout  a  fait  detruits.  On 
y  lira  et  dans  le  plus  bel  anglais  qui  fut  jamais  ecrit,  ce 
qu'etait  l'Angleterre  au  moment  ou  elle  etait  elle-meme 
et  rien  qu'elle-meme,  et  aussi  une  grande  partie  de 
rhistoire  de  la  France,  car  l'histoire  des  deux  pays  a  ete 
curieusement  entrem&ee  pendant  deux  cents  ans.  Notre 
Henri  II,  par  son  mariage  avec  Eleonore  d'Aquitaine, 
ajouta  enormement  a  ses  possessions  franchises:  tout 
l'ouest  de  la  France  lui  appartenait:  la  Picardie,  la  Nor- 
mandie,  la  Bretagne,  tout,  jusqu'aux  Basses-Pyrenees. 
Shakespeare  commence  ses  drames  historiques  avec  Jean. 
Un  messager  de  Philippe,  roi  sage  et  prevoyant,  arrive 
et  le  but  du  message  est  de  demander  a  Jean  d'abdiquer 
en  faveur  de  son  neveu  Arthur.  C'est  alors  que  les 
guerres  entre  l'Angleterre  et  la  France,  commencent  dans 
les  plaines  d' Angers.  Les  Anglais  sont  victorieux,  Arthur 
est  fait  prisonnier;  mais  la  victoire  ne  rapporte  rien  a 
l'Angleterre  a  cause  du  caractere  de  Jean,  si  opiniatre  et 
si  ombrageux  que  personne — ni  ses  nobles,  ni  Shakespeare 
— ne  reussit  a  le  devider.  Aussi,  le  drame  de  Shake- 
speare reste-t-il  confus  et  disparate.  Au  contraire,  avec 
le  caractere  vacillant  et  meditatif  de  Richard  II,  Shake- 
speare fit  un  tres  beau  drame  qui  a  toujours  ete  reconnu 
comme  une  etude  preparatoire  pour  Hamlet.  Les  evene- 
ments  y  sont  purement  anglais;  mais  avec  Henri  V  nous 
revenons  en  France,  a  Agincourt,  ou  le  due  d'Orleans  fut 
fait  prisonnier.  Henri  epousa  Catherine  et  devint  roi  de 
France.  Pendant  son  regne,  la  lutte  entre  les  deux 
nations  se  corse.  Jeanne,  la  bonne  Lorraine,  quitte  ses 
brebis   pour   aller   trouver    Charles   VII.      Elle   delivre 


232  AVOWALS 

Orleans  et,  peii  d'annees  apres,  les  Anglais  sont  chasses 
de  France.  La  deuxieme  et  las  troisieme  partie  des 
drames  de  Henri  VI  nous  reacontent  la  guerred  des  Roses : 
c'est-a-dire  la  guerre  entre  York  et  Lancaster,  et  ces 
guerres  civiles  prirent  fin  sur  le  champ  de  bataille  de 
Bosworth  par  la  mort  de  Richard  III.  Shakespeare  n'a 
rien  ecrit  sur  le  regne  d'Henri  VII,  mais  il  ecrivit  un 
tres  beau  drame  sur  Henri  VIII,  comme  s'il  etit  voulu 
montrer  le  dernier  lien  qui  existait  .  .  .  entre  vous  et 
moi.  Vous  avez  failli  devenir  protestants;  seulement 
Henri  de  Navarre  crut  que  Paris  valait  bien  une  messe, 
et  pour  un  baiser  d'Anne  Boleyn,  Henri  VIII  se  decida 
a  passer  outre. 

L'histoire  de  la  France  ne  se  trouve  pas  d'une  facpn 
aussi  complete  et  aussi  determinee  dans  l'ceuvre  de  Balzac 
Le  romancier  a  toujours  ete  obsede  par  son  epoque,  mais 
tout  de  m£me  il  l'a  quittee  pour  ecrire  sa  belle  etude  sur 
Catherine  de  Medicis;  las  lutte  entre  votre  religion  et  la 
mienne  l'a  tente,  et  la  grande  et  subtile  Florentine  qui 
passait,  avec  les  eclairs  cruels  de  la  Renaissance  dans  ses 
yeux,  et  l'energie  de  son  epoque  dans  sa  demarche.  II 
n'y  a  rien  peut-6tre  de  plus  poignant  dans  la  ComSdie 
humaine  que  la  scene  ou  Catherine  se  trouve  en  face  de 
Thomme  qui  est  mis  a  la  torture.  On  demands  a  la  reine 
s'il  faut  faire  encore  tourner  la  roue,  et,  sachant  que  la 
victime  a  la  force  de  resister  a  la  souff ranee,  elle  repond : 
Oui,  encore  un  tour,  ce  n'est  qu'un  heretique.  La  scene 
autour  du  dauphin  mourant  est  aussi  belle.  Sou  vent  je 
me  suis  demande  pourquoi  un  auteur  dramatique  ne  Ta 
pas  utilisee.  Peut-etre  faudrait-il  Shakespeare  pour  la 
mettre  en  scene.  Je  voudrais  la  citer;  et  le  portrait  de 
Calvin,  un  des  plus  extraordinaires  qui  existe  sur  papier 
imprime,  ou  toile  peinte,  evoque  en  moi  le  souvenir  des 
plus  beaux  portraits  de  Tecole  francaise — le  portrait  de 
M.  Bertin  qui  est  au  Louvre  peint  par  Ingres,  et  les  por- 
traits de  David  et  de  Prudhon.    Car,  malgre  le  romantisme 


AVOWALS  233 

de  Pepoque  de  1830,  son  ceuvre  n'a  rien  perdu  de  son 
caractere  essentiellement  frangais,  meme  traditionnel, 
tenant  bien  plus  au  classique  qu'on  ne  let  croit  generale- 
ment.  La  forme  de  Corneille,  Moliere  et  Racine  est 
differente,  on  peut  dire  tout  juste  Toppose;  mais  lorsque 
Ton  va  au  fond  des  idees,  on  voit  que  Balzac  n'est  pas 
moins  frangais,  qu'eux.  Autant  qu'eux  il  reste — puis-je 
dire? — un  urbain,  se  servant  de  la  nature  seulement  pour 
y  mettre  des  scenes  d'amour  et  de  galanterie  et  ne  se 
souciant  que  tres  peu  de  la  beaute  des  arbres,  ne  sachant 
probablement  pas  distinguer  un  bouleau  d'un  meleze,  et 
passant,  je  suis  sur,  pres  d'une  primevere  au  bord  de  l'eau 
sans  meme  la  regarder.  L'horizon  bleuatre  l'ennuie,  et 
il  detourne  les  yeux  pour  chercher  une  bille,  ne  s'inte- 
ressant  qu'aux  hommes  et  aux  villes  qu'ils  batissent.  Je 
me  souviens  dans  Ferragus  de  plusieurs  pages  sur  les  rues 
de  Paris;  la  rue  de  la  Paix  il  Padmire,  mais,  pour  certaines 
raisons,  il  ne  peut  lui  accorder  toute  son  admiration;  la 
rue  du  Faubourg  Montmartre  commence  bien,  mais  elle 
finit  en  queue  de  poisson;  la  Place  de  la  Bourse  au  clair 
de  lune  est  un  reve  de  Tancienne  Grece.  Dans  Catherine 
de  MSdicis  il  lui  a  f  allu  toute  la  ville  et  il  nous  raconte  les 
changements  qui  se  sont  produits  dans  Paris  depuis  le 
xvie  siecle  avec  tous  les  details,  comment  une  rue  qui 
allait  a  droite  et  a  gauche  ne  se  trouve  plus  sur  la  carte, 
etc.,  etc. 

S'il  n'avait  pas  ete  merveilleux  romancier,  il  aurait  ete 
architecte  ou  historien.  Laissnons  de  cote  l'architecte  et 
occupons-nous  de  l'historien.  Dans  ce  livre  Catherine  et 
les  personnes  qui  l'entourent  sont  aussi  vivantes  que 
celles  qui  se  meuvent  dans  la  ComSdie  humaine.  II  a 
obtenu  cette  intensite  de  vie  en  employant  le  dialogue.  Je 
sias  que  cette  maniere  de  traiter  l'histoire  n'est  pas  tres 
scientifique;  elle  est  regardee  de  travers  aujourd'hui; 
mais  je  crois  tout  de  meme  que  tous  ceux  qui  ne  sont  pas 
des  historiens  de  profession  trouveront  leur  plaisir  dans 


234  AVOWALS 

Catherine  de  MSdicis;  l'histoire  vivante,  meme  si  elle  est 
fausse,  vaut  mieux  que  l'histoire  morte,  m£me  si  elle  est 
vraie.  Et  en  fermant  le  livre  ils  regretteront  que  ce 
soit  son  aseul  essai  historique.  L'historien  etait  tou jours 
latent  sous  le  romancier;  dans  tous  ses  recits  il  y  a  une 
preoccupation  historique.  Au  milieu  de  son  roman  Un 
Manage  de  Gargons,  il  s'arrete  pour  decrire  un  village  tel 
qu'il  a  existe  au  xvie  siecle,  sous  pretexte  que  c'est  la  que 
son  heroine  a  vu  le  jour,  ou  pour  tout  autre  pretexte  aussi 
frivole.  Un  autre  exemple  flagrant  se  trouve  dans  Les 
Paysans.  Voulant  decrire  le  pare  et  le  chateau,  il  com- 
mence par  les  sept  portes,  car  il  y  a  sept  portes  a  ce  pare, 
et  il  assure  le  lecteur  que  pour  comprendre  le  roman  il 
est  necessaire  que  les  sept  portes  soient  decrites. 

Son  but  dans  ce  roman  etait  de  prouver  que  la  loi  etait 
insuffisante  pour  sauvegarder  les  interets  des  proprietaires 
contre  une  combinaison,  de  paysans;  et,  avec  une  clair- 
voyance extraordinaire,  il  prevue  tous  les  evenements 
qui  sont  arrives  en  Irlande  depuis  vingt-cinq  ans.  La 
victoire  des  fermiers  a  la  fin  du  roman  n'est  que  le  tableau 
exact  de  ce  qui  se  passe  en  Irlande  aujourd'hui. 

Dans  les  Chouans  Balzac  a  raconte  les  miseres  et 
l'heroisme  des  paysans  qui  n'ont  pas  voulu  accepter  la 
Republique,  et,  pour  le  plaisir  de  decrire  la  retraite  de 
Russie,  il  a  compose  le  conte  qui  porte  le  nom  Adieu. 
Vous  vous  souvenez  de  ces  descriptions  du  passage  de  la 
Beresina.  C'est  la  ou  la  pauvre  femme  dit  adieu  a  son 
mari.  Adieu  est  le  seul  mot  dont  elle  se  souvient  dans 
sa  folie.  Ce  conte  prouve  que  Balzac  a  su  s'interesser 
aux  grands  evemements  historiques,  mais  son  epoque 
l'obsedait.  II  se  peut  qu'on  ecrive  de  meilleurs  romans 
sur  le  present  que  sur  le  passe;  il  se  peut,  aussi,  que  le 
passe  fournisse  de  meilleurs  sujets  pour  le  theatre.  En 
tous  cas  Shakespeare  a  bati  son  theatre  dans  le  passe, 
mais  etant  un  artiste  de  la  Renaissance  il  ne  craignait 
pas  d'introduire  les  mceurs  de  son  epoque  dans  les  drames 


AVOWALS  235 

historiques.  Lisez  la  premiere  partie  de  Henri  IV  et 
vous  y  trouverez  la  vie  des  tavernes  de  Eastcheap  racontee 
avec  le  meme  naturalisme  que  Balzac  a  mis  a  raconter 
le  quartier  Latin  dans  les  Illusions  perdues.  Nous  nous 
souvenons  du  petit  cabaret  ou  Lucien  fit  la  connaissance 
de  Lousteau,  lorsque  nous  parlons  de  la  taverne  ou  Falstaff 
dispute  ses  comptes  aves  Mistress  Quickly.  Des  souvenirs 
de  Doll  Tearsheet  et  les  soudards  de  Fleet  Street  se 
melent  avec  nos  souveniers  de  Coralie  et  de  Florine  et  des 
journalistes  des  boulevards.  Les  deux  actrices  sont 
esquissees  avec  une  main  legere  comme  celle  de  Shake- 
speare, lorsqu'il  jetait  sur  le  papier  quelques  traits  femi- 
nins.  L'amour  de  Coralie  s'exhale  de  sa  bouche  comme 
le  parfum  d'une  fleur,  et  sur  le  coin  de  sa  table  Lucien 
ecrit  un  article  tellement  joli,  que  personne  n'aurait  pu 
Tecrire  sauf  Balzac.  Qui  aurait  pu  faire  parler  les  jour- 
nalistes pendant  le  grand  souper,  excepte  Shakespeare  et 
Thomme  qui  les  a  fait  parler?  Les  pages  succedent  aux 
pages,  Pesprit  de  Balzac  nous  entraine  comme  une  mer 
profonde:  des  aphorismes  clapotent  autour  de  nous 
comme  des  lames;  nous  subissons  le  sentiment  de  Tinfini; 
et  le  seul  juste  reproche  qu'on  puisse  faire  a  ce  souper 
est  qu'il  n'y  a  pas  un  seul  convive  qui  symbolise  la  Rive 
gauche  comme  Falstaff  la  Tete  du  Sanglier  en  Eastcheap. 
Je  crois  que  nous  avons  tous  rencontre  sur  le  boulevard 
des  journalistes  qui  ont  plus  d'allure  que  Lousteau,  et 
qui  incarnent  une  humanite  plus  riche.  Mais  si  Balzac 
a  echoue  avec  Lousteau,  il  a  pleinement  reussi  avec 
Lucien.  J'ose  dire  que  j'aime  mieux  le  Romeo  de  la 
comedie  que  celui  de  la  tragedie.  Lucien  est  bien  moins 
abstrait,  et  Balzac  a  trouve  la  phrase  qui  resume  les 
ambitions  d'un  jeune  homme,  lorsque  Lucien  repond  a 
Vautrin:  Je  voudrais  etre  celebre  et  aime. 

En  poursuivant  les  analogies  qui  lient  ensemble  ces 
deux  mattres  de  la  pensee  humaine,  il  faut  oublier  les 
petits  traits  qui  sont  sans  importance,  pour  regarder  en 


236  AVOWALS 

face  ce  qu'ils  ont  d'essential  en  commun.  lis  sont  tous 
deux  pour  nous  les  plus  grands  evocateurs  d'ames  qui 
aient  jamais  existe.  Sous  ce  rapport,  on  ne  trouverait 
pas  leur  egal  en  Allemagne,  en  Espagne,  en  Italie,  et  si 
Ton  retournait  vers  l'ancienne  Grece,  on  trouverait  un 
gout  plus  parfait,  mais  non  l'abondance  de  Balzac  et  de 
Shakespeare.  lis  sont  abondants  comme  la  vie  meme 
Rappelons-nous  d'abord  les  creations  du  poete,  seulement 
les  noms  qui  viennent  a  l'esprit  de  tout  le  monde  des 
qu'on  parle  de  Shakespeare:  Hamlet,  Othello,  Lear, 
Antoine,  Brutus,  Cassius,  Falstaff  et  les  Richard  II  et 
III.  Et  sans  songer  aux  personnages  des  comedies  qui 
ne  sont  necessairement  que  des  aspects  exterieurs: 
Benedict,  Petrucchio,  Malvolio,  etc.,  pronongons  les  noms 
qui  representent  le  mieux  la  ComSdie  humaine:  Le  Pere 
Goriot,  le  Baron  Hulot,  Philippe  Rubempre,  Cesar 
Birotteau,  le  cure  de  Tours — qui  encore?  Eugenie 
Grandet.  Je  m'arrete,  Peprueve  est  injuste  pour  Balzac. 
Son  talent  ne  se  resume  pas  entierement  dans  ses  car- 
acteres;  ses  descriptions,  ses  commentaires  philosophiques 
comptent  pour  beaucoup  dans  son  ceuvre.  Pour  com- 
prendre  l'enormite  du  Tourangeau,  il  faut  connaitre  les 
50  volumes  qu'il  a  ecrits  de  sa  propre  main  en  une  ving- 
taine  d'annees.  Quoique  tres  grands,  ses  personnages 
n'ont  pas  l'eternelle  allure  de  Lear,  d 'Othello,  de  Macbeth 
et  d'Hamlet,  ni  de  Don  Quichotte  ni  de  Sancho.  Balzac 
n'avait  pas  le  sentiment  de  Theroique.  Mais  Shake- 
speare l'avait,  et  c'est  justement  ce  sentiment  de  Theroique 
qui  Ta  suave  bien  des  fois  du  naufrage,  par  exemple  dans 
le  Roi  Lear  que  Swinburne,  le  grand  poete  anglais,  pre- 
fere  a  Hamlet.  Les  poetes  comme  les  dieux  ne  donnent 
pas  leurs  raisons,  mais  les  romanciers  en  donnent  et 
l'annee  derniere,  Tolstoi,  debout  sur  un  rocher  de  la 
steppe,  a  declare  avec  la  vehemence  d'un  Jeremie  que 
ce  qui  manque  a  la  tragedie,  c'est  le  bon  sens.     Si  le  bon 


AVOWALS  237 

sens  a  jamais  manque  a  quelqu'un,  je  ne  saurais  dire  s'il 
a  le  plus  manque  a  Jeremie  ou  a  Tolstoi. 

Emporte  par  la  folie  de  la  haine,  Tolstoi  a  pris  a  partie 
la  poesie,  la  musique,  Tart  tout  entier,  la  vie  elle-m^me. 
J'aime  mieux  la  folie  de  l'amour,  quoiqu'elle  ait  pousse 
Swinburne  a  mettre  des  fleurs  a  la  boutonniere  de  tous 
les  petits  poetes  du  temps  d'Elisabeth,  et  malgre  qu'elle 
1'ait  incite,  dans  un  dernier  delire,  a  tresser  une  telle 
couronne  de  lauriers  pour  le  roi  Lear,  que  le  pauve  vieux 
n'en  peut  plus  relever  la  t£te.  II  faut  lire  ce  livre  de 
louanges  et  d'imprecations.  .  .  .  Enfin,  il  trouve  un  petit 
defaut,  la  disparition  du  fou,  le  compagnon  du  roi  Lear 
jusqu'a  la  fin  du  troisieme  acte,  et  il  dit  qu'aucune  conjec- 
ture audacieuse  ou  subtile  ne  peut  l'expliquer.  Je  la 
regrette  autant  que  lui;  le  fou  est  certainement  l'etre  le 
plus  raisonnable  de  la  tragedie,  et  apres  sa  disparition  la 
tragedie  n'est  rien  qu'orage,  desespoir,  terreur,  delire; 
des  scenes  de  cruaute  se  suivent  les  unes  apres  les  autres. 
La  piece  est  comme  un  navire  qui,  portant  trop  de  voiles, 
est  toujours  pr6t  a  chavirer.  Le  gouvernail  est  brise,  les 
mats  tombent,  personne  n'est  debout,  sauf  le  viellard  qui 
continue  ses  lamentations  jusqu'a  la  fin  et  qui  meurt  avec 
sa  fille  morte  dans  ses  bras. 

La  disparition  du  fou  n'est  pas  la  seule  chose  etrange 
dans  cette  piece;  tout  y  est  inexplicable,  meme  le  genie 
de  Shakespeare,  si  Ton  n'admet  pas  que  la  piece  n'est 
qu'un  brouillon  qui  n'a  pas  ete  assez  travaille.  En  tous 
cas  on  ne  prend  plaisir  a  sa  lecture  que  lorsque  Lear 
declame,  ou  que  le  fou  nous  entretient  avec  sa  grande 
sagesse.  Le  role  d'Edmond  est  fait  d'une  hypocrisie 
assez  plate;  Edgar,  son,  frere,  est  incomprehensible.  On 
devine  dans  son  role  une  idee  que  l'auteur  a  cherchee 
sans  la  trouver.  L'action  flotte  entre  une  epoque  tres 
lointaine  et  le  Moyen-Age.  Les  trois  filles  de  Lear  sont 
a  peine  plus  indiquees  que  les  trois  sceurs  dans  le  conte 
de  Cendrillon.     Je  raconte  la  piece  telle  qu'elle  apparait 


238  AVOWALS 

a  la  lecture,  mais  elle  acquiert  une  grandeur  surnaturelle 
lorsqu'on  la  voit  representee. — II  faut  voir  Shakespeare! 
La  parade  lui  est  necessaire,  et  surtout  il  faut  l'entendre, 
car  il  s'adresse  bien  plus  a  l'ouie  qu'a  l'ceil. 

Le  Roi  Lear  est  la  plus  belle  esquisse  qu'un  poete  ait 
jamais  laissee,  mais  il  ne  faut  pas  oublier  qu'en  litterature 
l'esquisse  ne  vaut  pas  l'ceuvre  achevee.  J'ai  choisi  Lear 
plutot  que  Hamlet,  Othello,  et  j'en  ai  parle  en  detail 
pour  une  raison  que  vous  avec  deja  devinee.  Vous  savez 
que  prendre  le  sujet  d'autrui,  c'est  le  droit  de  tout  grand 
artiste.  Rubens  l'a  fait  quand  il  a  apporte  d'ltalie  la 
composition  de  La  Descente  de  croix.  La  tache  de  Balzac 
a  ete  plus  difficile  que  celle  de  Rubens;  le  grand  Flamand 
a  honore  un  peintre  quelconque  en  lui  prenant  son  bien, 
tandis  que  Balzac  est  entre  en  lutte  avec  le  plus  grand 
poete  du  monde  et  il  en  est  sorti  triomphant  avec  un 
chef-d'oeuvre  a  la  hauteur  de  l'original.  II  est  vraiment 
a  Thonneur  de  la  France  qu'un  Frangais  ait  pu  refaire  le 
Roi  Lear  de  fond  en  comble  et  avec  la  meme  aisant  dont 
la  nature  elle-meme  transforme  les  choses.  Ay  ant  un 
jour  rencontre  le  Roi  Lear  dans  la  lande  desolee,  l'idee 
est  venue  a  Balzac  de  le  prendre  par  la  main,  de  l'habiller 
a  la  mode  de  Louis-Philippe  et  de  le  conduire  dans  la 
maison  Vauquer,  et  la  il  en  a  fait  un  bourgeois  silencieux 
et  timide  au  milieu  d'un  petit  monde  dechu, — le  detritus 
de  la  grande  ville.  Et  il  a  pu  faire  ce  changement  sans 
que  le  sujet  perdft  rien  de  ce  qu'il  avait  d'essentiel. 
Maintenant  le  pere  qui  se  sacrifie  pour  ses  fllles  et  qui 
est  ensuite  abandonne  par  elles,  parle  en  prose;  quand 
il  parle,  ses  paroles  sont  aussi  rares  que  les  paroles  du 
roi  etaient  abondantes,  mais  les  petites  phrases  debitees 
par  lui  nous  revelent  une  humanite  que  les  vers  avaient 
ete  incapables  d'exprimer.  II  est  impossible,  je  crois,  de 
lire  la  mort  du  pere  Goriot  sans  comprendre  qu'elle  est 
aussi  reelle  que  la  mort  de  Lear;  seulement  elle  est 
moins  hautaine.     Nous  sommes  loin  de  la  tragedie  cyclo- 


AVOWALS  239 

peenne  ou  les  vers  tonnent  et  luisent,  mais  il  y  a  ceci  de 
commun  entre  les  deux  morts  que  la  derniere  est  aussi 
indemne  que  la  premiere  de  toute  sentimentalite;  la  joie 
que  nous  eprouvons  en  lisant  le  roman  aussi  bien  qu'en 
lisant  la  tragedie  est  une  joie  d'art,  une  joie  qui  ne  fait 
pas  couler  de  larmes.  II  n'y  a  pas  une  larme  dans  Shake- 
speare et  je  ne  me  souviens  d'aucune  en  Balzac. 

La  table  d'hote  de  Mme  Vauquer  est  d'une  admirable 
verite  et  je  ne  crois  pas  qu'il  y  ait  dans  l'ceuvre  de  Balzac 
une  plus  belle  page.  Mais  puisque  Swinburne  a  trouve 
un  defaut  dans  le  Roi  Lear,  il  faut  bien  que  j'en  trouve 
un  dans  le  Pere  Goriot.  II  a  regrette  l'absence  du  fou; 
moi,  je  regrette  la  presence  de  Vautrin.  Les  discours 
sur  la  societe  moderne  qu'il  tient  avec  Rastignac  me 
semblent  aussi  insipides  que  les  pires  pages  de  la  tragedie, 
et  on  n'est  pas  critique  pour  un  sou,  si  Ton  ne  remarque 
que  les  filles  de  Goriot  sont  a  peine  plus  indiquees  que 
celles  de  Lear.  Si  elles  nous  semblent  plus  reelles,  c'est 
que  nous  les  voyons  dans  les  salons  et  que  nous  les  savons 
amoureuses  de  jeunes  gens  qui  leur  empruntent  de  l'argent 
et  qui  portent  des  souliers  vernis.  Mais  il  ne  faut  pas  se 
laisser  duper  par  les  dehors :  a  vrai  dire  il  n'y  a  guere  plus 
d'humanite  dans  Anastasie  de  Restaud  et  Delphine  de 
Nucingen  que  dans  Goneril,  Regan  et  Cordelia,  un  peu 
plus,  parce  qu'elles  sont  nees  deux  cents  ans  plus  tard, 
dans  un  siecle  ou  la  femme  avait  acquis  une  certaine 
position  et  une  certaine  autorite. 

Je  n'ai  pas  la  pretention  d'avoir  fouille  la  literature 
de  la  Renaissance  a  fond,  mais  on  se  rend  tres  bien 
compte  de  ce  qu'il  y  a  dans  une  litterature  sans  l'avoir 
lue  d'un  bout  a  l'autre.  On  devine  le  caractere  d'une 
litterature  comme  on  devine  le  caractere  de  l'homme  qui 
vous  parle:  a  premiere  vue  on  sait  son  age,  sa  race,  a 
quelle  classe  il  appartient  et  cinq  minutes  apres  de  quoi 
il  est  capable  et  un  grand  nombre  de  ses  id6es.  II  en 
est  de  m§me  avec  une  litterature.    Apres  avoir  lu  deux 


240  AVOWALS 

sonnets  de  Petrarque  on  sait  que  Laure  n'etait  pour  lui 
qu'ine  exhortation  litteraire;  on  ouvre  la  Divine  ComSdie 
a  la  page  ou  Dante  entrevoit  Beatrice  dans  les  cieux  et 
on  sait  tout  de  suite  qu'il  va  faire  d'elle  une  seraphique 
theolgienne.  Et  Boccace?  Sans  lire  une  seule  ligne 
de  lui,  on  sait  qu'il  n'a  jamais  songe  a  autre  chose  qu'a 
la  jolie  chair  de  ses  mattresses  et  au  bon  fricot  qu'il 
pouvait  cuisiner.  II  est  inutile  que  je  passe  en  Espagne 
pour  vous  parler  de  Dulcinee,  la  bonne  amie  de  Don 
Quichotte:  vous  savez  tres  bien  que  Cervantes  se  servait 
d'elle  pour  en  faire  la  parodie  des  grandes  amours  du 
moyen  age.  Je  pourrais  vous  conduire  en  France  pour 
vous  parler  de  Rabelais  et  de  Montaigne;  et  puis  vous 
amener  en  Angleterre  pour  vous  lire  les  contes  de  Chaucer: 
mais  il  faudrait  beaucoup  de  temps  pour  toutes  ces  lec- 
tures; et  il  sera  plus  simple  de  vous  inviter  a  venir  avec 
moi  au  Louvre;  il  ne  faut  pas  autant  de  temps  pour  voir 
des  tableaux  que  pour  lire  des  livres;  ils  vous  renseign- 
ent  sur  les  idees  qui  ont  prevalu  a  leur  epoque  et  on 
peut  dire  en  toute  securite  qu'aucun  art  n'est  moins  in- 
discret  qu'un  autre.  Ce  qui  n'est  pas  dans  la  peinture 
n'est  pas  dans  Fame  du  peintre.  Celles  de  Botticelli  et 
de  Mantegna  nous  apprennent  qu'ils  out  beaucoup  reflechi 
sur  les  draperies  flottantes  et  qu'ils  ont  trouve  comment 
on  peut  tirer  parti  du  corps  de  la  femme  dans  les  pan- 
neaux  decor atifs. 

A  leur  epoque  Pompei  etait  encore  ensevelie,  mais 
l'esprit  de  l'antiquite  qui  couvait  sous  les  cendres  leur 
a  fait  entrevoir  de  tres  beaux  plis  qu'ils  n'auraient  jamais 
pu  dessiner,  s'ils  s'etaient  apitoyes  sur  le  sort  humain  et 
s'ils  s'etaient  inquietes  des  souffrances  et  des  melancolies 
feminines.  Je  ne  crois  pas  que  vous  trouviez  dans  les 
yeux  des  madones  que  Botticelli  peignait  pour  ses  patrons 
les  ecclesiastiques  plus  de  douleur  que  dans  les  yeux  des 
femmes  qui  dansaient  en  chlamydes  autour  des  vases 
grecs.     Dans  les  femmes  de  Michel- Ange  y  a-t-il  seule- 


AVOWALS  241 

ment  un  sexe?  Le  sexe  de  la  femme  lui  repugnait  et  il 
a  fait  d'elle  un  etre  mixte,  viril  et  muscle.  L'histoire 
nous  apprend  que  Raphael  a  beaucoup  aime  sa  maitresse 
la  Fornarina  et  ses  tableaux  prouvent  qu'il  n'a  du  etre 
parfaitement  heureux  que  lorsqu'il  se  trouvait  seul  avec 
elle  dans  son  atelier,  cherchant  une  attitude  plus  noble, 
plus  douce  que  toutes  celles  qu'elle  avait  deja  prises  et 
qui  lui  avaient  inspire  pourtant  des  chefs-d'oeuvre.  II 
dut  etre  content,  quand  elle  donna  ce  beau  mouvement 
de  bras  avec  lequel  elle  attire  un  enfant  vers  un  autre 
dans  La  Belle  Jardiniere,  ou  quand,  avec  un  mouvement 
de  bras  aussi  beau,  elle  souleve  le  voile  qui  couvre  le 
nouveau-ne.  Phidias  aurait  compris  Raphael.  Leur 
point  de  vue  est  le  meme.  lis  n'ont  cherch6  que  la 
beaute  pure.  Titien  a  laisse  voir  toute  son  ame  sensuelle 
dans  la  belle  exaltation  du  mouvement  de  la  femme  nue 
assise  au  bord  du  puits;  elle  semble  adresser  la  parole  a 
une  femme  richement  habillee  qui  ne  l'ecoute  pas;  un 
pale  chevalier  chevauche  dans  le  fond  ombreux;  et  vous 
vous  souvenez  aussi  de  l'autre  tableau  ou  un  corps  de 
femme,  alourdi  par  la  chaleur  d'un  apres-midi  roux  et 
silencieux,  se  traine  a  la  fontaine  pour  y  puiser  de  l'eau, 
et  comment  le  murmure  de  l'eau  entrant  dans  la  jarre  se 
mele  au  chant  du  guitariste.  Celle-ci  toutes  les  femmes 
de  Titien  nous  apprennent  que  le  peintre  n'a  pas  cherche 
autre  chose  en  elles  que  des  creatures  de  plaisir  qui  n'ont 
jamais  pense  ni  reve.  II  ne  pouvait  oublier  l'odalisque, 
meme  quand  il  peignait  sa  fille;  vous  vous  souvenez  com- 
ment elle  s'en  va  les  yeux  regardant  en  arriere.  Si  aucun 
portrait  d'homme  n'existait  de  sa  main,  on  dirait  que 
Titien,  de  tous  les  peintres,  etait  le  moins  psychologue. 
Mais  nous  avons  des  portraits  de  lui  qui  racontent  la  vie 
entiere  des  princes,  des  senateurs  et  des  nobles  jeunes 
gens. 

Leonard  da  Vinci  a  verse  une  mysticite  paienne  qui 
lui  est  personnelle  dans  les  yeux  de  tous  ses  modeles. 


242  AVOWALS 

Rubens  a  fait  couler  quelques  larmes  conventionnelles  sur 
les  joues  de  ses  madones,  mais  ses  belles  Flamandes  sont 
encore  plus  depourvues  de  mentalite  que  les  Italiennes 
dont  nous  venons  de  parler.  Ni  Isabelle  Brandt  ni 
Helene  Fourment  ne  lui  ont  inspire  une  pensee  intime; 
elles  ne  furent  pour  lui  que  des  fleurs  vivantes  et  il  peig- 
nait  leurs  portraits  exactement  comme  il  aurait  peint  des 
pivoines  et  des  coquelicots.  Van  Dyck  et  Jordaens  ne  se 
souciaient  pas  davantage  de  ce  qui  nous  interesse  tant: 
Tame  feminine.  Vous  pouvez  scruter  tous  les  tableaux, 
feuilleter  tous  les  livres  de  la  Renaissance,  vous  n'en 
trouverez  aucune  trace;  pas  plus  dans  Shakespeare  que 
parmi  les  autres:   voila  ou  je  voulais  en  venir. 

Je  sais  que  les  femmes  de  Shakespeare  ont  ete  louees 
par  des  critiques  eminents  et,  parmi  la  foule  des  admir- 
ateurs,  se  trouve  Taine,  un  critique  tres  subtil,  qui  voyait 
clair,  mais  qui  pourtant  ne  s'est  jamais  demande  d'une 
facon  decisive,  si  Shakespeare  decrivait  mieux  les  hommes 
que  les  femmes,  ou  le  contraire,  ni  s'il  decrivait  les  princes 
et  les  aristocrates  mieux  que  les  gens  du  peuple.  A  l'en- 
tendre,  on  dirait  que  Shakespeare  etait  un  auteur  sans 
parti-pris  qui  faisait  tout  egalement  bien.  Cet  exemple 
d'impartialite  a  ete  suivi  par  d'autres  critiques  moins 
eminents  et  moins  subtils  qui  se  contentent  de  crier: 
Tout  est  beau,  tout  est  sublime  dans  cet  auteur  sans 
pareil.  Tous  les  six  mois,  un  nouveau  livre  parait  sur 
Shakespeare,  aussi  vide  et  declamatoire  que  le  livre  pre- 
cedent; on  n'y  trouve  jamais  un  effort  de  la  part  de 
Tauteur  pour  comprendre;  il  semble  suffisant  d'elever  la 
voix  et  de  ne  sortir  jamais  de  la  louange  banale;  on  evite, 
autant  que  possible,  d'indiquer  ses  preferences,  si  Ton 
en  a;  tout  est  beau,  tout  est  sublime;  nous  sommes 
etourdis  par  la  veste  clameur  de  cette  adoration.  On 
dirait  une  reunion  de  negres  methodistes  dans  une 
chapelle;  chacun  s'epoumonne  a  crier  plus  fort  que  son 
voisin,  afin  d'attirer  Tattention  du  bon  Dieu.    Peut-etre 


AVOWALS  243 

les  critiques  croient-ils  que  Shakespeare  les  entend?  En 
tous  cas,  la  folie  s'accroit  chaque  jour,  et  je  ne  serais  pas 
etonne,  si  le  culte  de  Iahveh  venait  a,  chanceler  en  Angle- 
terre,  qu'on  se  hatat  de  mettre  Shakespeare  a  sa  place 
au  haut  des  cieux.  Dans  le  tumulte  de  ces  voix  on  en- 
tend  la  voix  de  Swinburne  au-dessus  de  toutes  les  autres; 
du  fond  de  sa  tombe  il  crie:  Tout  ce  qu'on  peut  savoir 
de  la  vie  de  l'homme,  de  la  vie  de  la  femme  et  de  la  vie 
de  l'enfant,  Shakespeare  le  savait  mieux  que  tout  homme 
qui  soit  jamais  ne.  Et  cette  phrase,  que  je  viens  de 
citer,  doit  vous  faire  comprendre  oil  nous  ens  ommes; 
Shakespeare  a  tres  peu  parle  d'enfants;  impossible  d'en 
parler  aussi  peu,  a  moins  de  ne  pas  en  parler  du  tout. 
Neanmoins  Swinburne  n'hesite  pas  a  dire  que  Shakespeare 
les  connait  mieux  que  tout  homme  qui  soit  jamais  ne. 
Le  malheur  est  que  des  eloges  si  factices  et  si  exageres 
empechent  toute  vraie  appreciation  du  poete.  On  perd 
la  tete  et  les  traits  les  plus  caracteristiques  de  son  genie 
passent  inapergus.  On  lit  Shakespeare  aujourd'hui  comme 
les  prophetes  ont  ete  lus  autrefois,  avec  une  arriere-pensee: 
il  s'agit  de  prouver  que  c'est  le  comedian  et  non  pas  Lord 
Bacon  qui  est  l'auteur  des  drames;  ou  bien  il  s'agit  de 
faire  des  livres  qui  conduiront  leurs  auteurs  aux  chaires 
bien  payees  de  l'Universite,  ou  bien  il  y  a  des  raisons 
patriotiques. 

L'Angleterre  a  produit  Shakespeare,  Shakespeare  a 
decrit  l'Angleterre.  Done,  il  faut  louer  Shakespeare  des 
qu'on  parle  de  litterature,  et  puis  il  faut  faire  des  livres 
sur  Shakespeare,  pour  prouver  qu'on  a  lu  le  poete.  II  y 
a  un  proverbe  francais  qui  dit  que  les  arbres  nous  em- 
pechent de  voir  la  for&t;  eh  bien!  en  Angleterre,  ce  sont 
les  professeurs  qui  nous  empechent  de  voir  Shakespeare. 
Et  tous  les  jours  l'ombre  devient  plus  complete.  Que 
faire?  Bien.  On  ne  peut  empecher  ces  messieurs 
d'ecrire  ou  de  parler,  et,  si  on  le  pouvait,  on  ne  le  voudrait 
pas,  car  ce  sont  des  hommes  excellents  qui  travaillent  de 


244  AVOWALS 

leur  mieux,  et  je  suis  sur  que  chacun  d'eux  croit  qu'il 
contribue  .  .  .  je  ne  sais  a  quoi  il  contribue,  mais  c'est 
deja  bien,  de  croire  qu'on  contribue  a  quelque  chose. 
Leur  patience  est  admirable;  il  parait  qu'ils  passent  dix- 
huit  heures  par  jour  a,  lire  les  ceuvres  du  grand  maitre, 
faisant  toute  espece  de  calculs,  comptant  les  mots,  les 
lettres,  les  majuscules,  les  virgules,  tout.  lis  ont  fait 
des  livres  sur  les  plantes,  les  fruits,  les  fleurs  et  les 
animaux  dont  parlent  Shakespeare.  lis  ont  appris  tout 
ce  qu'on  peut  apprendre,  mais  il  parait  qu'il  y  a  bien  des 
gens  qui  apprennent  sans  comprendre;  c'est  le  cas  de 
nos  professeurs.  Tout  de  meme,  je  me  demande  com- 
ment, en  ferment  le  folio,  apres  leurs  dix-huit  heures  de 
lecture,  l'idee  ne  leur  est  jamais  venue  que  le  poete  n'a 
fait  autre  chose  que  peindre  une  serie  de  portraits 
d'hommes  en  pied,  les  plus  parfaits  qui  aient  jamais  ete 
realises,  et  esquisser  seulement  quelques  silhouettes  de 
femmes,  de  ci,  de  la,  en  bas,  dans  les  coins,  ces  silhouettes 
vraiment  delicieuses  qui  se  nomment  Ophelie,  Desdemone, 
Cordelie.  Meme  le  fait  que  les  roles  de  femme  etaient 
joues,  au  temps  de  Shakespeare,  par  de  jeunes  garcpns 
n'a  pas  revele  a  messieurs  les  professeurs,  que  Shake- 
speare n'ecrivit  que  les  roles  qui  pouvaient  etre  distribues, 
et  c'est,  en  effet,  cet  qu'il  a  fait.  II  y  a  peu  de  roles  dans 
son  ceuvre  qui  demandent  le  corps  et  la  grace  de  la  femme. 
Un  jeune  homme  comprendrait  bien  l'esprit  changeant 
de  Beatrice  et  il  pourrait  le  representer. 

En  creant  Lady  Macbeth,  Shakespeare  a  evite,  on  peut 
dire  avec  soin,  de  demontrer  la  domination  qu'elle  avait 
sur  son  mari.  Messieurs  les  professeurs  me  diront  que 
la  puissance  qu'elle  exergait  est  exclusivement  intellec- 
tuelle.  Oui,  mais  pourquoi?  Parce  que  Shakespeare 
savait  que  le  role  serait  joue  par  un  jeune  homme. 
Catherine,  dans  La  MSgere  apprivoisSe,  pourrait  tres  bien 
§tre  jouee  de  m£me;  le  role  est  si  simple:  une  femme 
qui  rage.     Portia  ne  nous  interesse  que  lorsqu'elle  se 


AVOWALS  245 

deguise  en  avocat  de  la  cour.  Dans  La  nuit  des  Rois. 
Shakespeare  cherche  encore  une  fois  a  fuir  la  femme. 
Viola  se  deguise  en  gargon  pour  &tre  aupres  du  due 
qu'elle  aime,  et  de  nos  jours,  le  role  a  ete  joue  par  un 
jeune  homme.  La  peinture  et  la  musique  ont  tellement 
insiste  sur  la  feminite  de  Juliette,  que  je  n'ose  en  parler, 
mais  tout  de  meme,  si  Ton  s'adresse  au  texte,  on  y  voit 
que  Shakespeare  n'a  jamais  cherche  a  mettre  une  differ- 
ence entre  l'amour  de  Romeo  pour  Juliette  et  l'amour 
de  Juliette  pour  Romeo.  La  personnalite  de  Desdemone 
est  encore  plus  vague;  une  petite  obeissance,  pas  davan- 
tage;  neanmoins,  un  professeur  eminent  lui  a  consacre 
plusieurs  pages  d'un  livre  intitule  Les  Femmes  de  Shake- 
speare, et  il  poursuit  ce  joli  fantome — peut-£tre  Tun  des 
plus  jolis  de  la  litterature — et  d'autres  jolis  fantomes  a 
peine  moins  jolis,  en  les  parant  de  subtilites  qu'ils  n'ont 
pas  et  dont  leur  createur  ne  voudrait  pas.  Pauvre  pro- 
fesseur! II  n'a  jamais  compris  que,  si  Shakespeare  avait 
approfondi  ses  personnages  feminins,  son  ceuvre  serait 
moins  parfaite,  qu'une  ceuvre  d'art  ne  peut-etre  toute  en 
cimes,  qu'il  faut  des  plaines  et  des  vallees.  De  tous  les 
livres  sur  Shakespeare  e'est  celui  peut-etre  que  je  regrette 
le  plus,  car,  pour  penetrer  dans  Tesprit  du  poete  et  de 
son  epoque,  on  doit  se  rendre  compte  que,  pour  des  rai- 
sons  a  la  fois  historiques  et  pratiques,  et  peut-6tre  aussi 
affaire  de  temperament,  les  femmes  de  Shakespeare  sont 
d'uninteret  tout  a  fait  secondaire.  Mais  viola!  admettre 
cela,  ce  serait  admettre  que  Tart  de  Shakespeare  ne  fut 
pas  Tart  complet,  Tart  supreme.  II  y  a  des  gens  a  qui 
Phidias  et  Michel-Ange  ne  suffisent  pas;  ils  voudraient — 
je  crois  qu'ille  appellent  cela  idealiser — n'en  faire  qu'un 
avec  les  deux.  Le  produit  serait  un  monstre  dont  nous 
nous  detournerions  avec  horreur;  et  je  me  detournerais 
avec  horreur  de  ce  Shakespeare  que  la  critique  anglaise 
a  cree  durant  ces  vingt-cinq  dernieres  annees;  je  vou- 
drais  sauver  Shakespeare  de  Tempyree  nais  ou  Ton  pre- 


246  AVOWALS 

tend  rinstaller.  II  est  si  interessant  comme  Anglais 
ay  ant  vecu  a  la  fin  du  xvie  siecle,  que  c'est  une  pitie  de 
le  hisser  dans  la  solitude  de  ces  hauteurs.  L'homme  a 
assez  de  genie  pour  que  ses  admirateurs  n'aient  pas 
besoin  d'en  faire  un  dieu  sachant  tout  le  passe  et  jetant 
un  regard  pergant  dans  Pavenir,  devinant  meme  Tame 
feminine,  qui  ne  fait  son  apparition  dans  Tart  que  cin- 
quante  ans  plus  tard,  au  milieu  du  xviie  siecle,  et  non 
pas  dans  la  litterature,  mais  dans  la  peinture. 

Selon  moi,  c'est  Rembrandt  qui  fut  le  premier  a  con- 
cevoir  que  la  femme  avait  une  existence  personnelle, 
qu'aussi  bien  que  l'homme  elle  pensait,  r&vait,  se  deman- 
dait  si  la  vie  etait  un  grand  malheur  que  seulement  la 
mort  pourrait  apaiser,  ou  bien  une  promenade  delicieuse 
dont  il  fallait  remercier  le  Seigneur,  comme  Renan  Pa 
enseigne.  On  voit  la  femme  pour  la  premiere  fois  dans 
les  tableaux  de  Rembrandt.  Celle  qui  se  fait  laver  les 
pieds  au  Louvre,  je  ne  me  rappelle  plus  le  nom  du  tableau, 
en  est  un  exemple.  Cette  femme  est  triste  comme 
une  femme  peut-£tre  triste.  Le  portrait  de  la  femme 
de  Rembrandt  dans  la  Salle  Carree  est  un  exemple  en- 
core plus  frappant.  Mon  Dieu!  comme  on  lit  son  ame 
dans  ses  yeux!  Elle  se  rend  compte  de  sa  faiblesse  et 
de  sa  dependance;  et  d'une  fagon  presque  inconsciente, 
elle  songe  qu'elle  n'est  que  le  satellite  d'un  homme  de 
genie.  Si  Rembrandt  revenait  au  monde  (on  ne  fait 
heureusement  pas  revenir  les  morts  pour  si  peu  de  chose, 
je  congois^ ;  mais  si,  pour  des  raisons  serieuses,  il  revenait 
et  qu'on  lui  montrat  les  lignes  que  je  viens  de'crire,  je 
crois  savoir  ce  qu'il  dirait:  Eh  bien!  il  est  possible  que 
le  monsieur  ait  raison,  mais  je  n'y  ai  pas  pense.  Si  Rem- 
brandt y  avait  pense,  il  n'aurait  pas  entrevu  Tame  femi- 
nine avec  une  telle  clairvoyance.  II  Pa  peinte  inconsciem- 
ment  et  il  est  probable  que  pas  plus  que  lui,  nul  de  ses  con- 
temporains  n'a  vu  ce  qui  flottait  sur  les  toiles.  II  ne  faut 
pas  oublier  que  ce  que  nous  appelons  la  verite  n'existe 


AVOWALS  U7 

pas  dans  les  choses,  mais  dans  les  yeux  qui  les  regardent. 
Tout  ce  qui  est  femme,  nous  le  voyons  mieux  qu'on  ne 
le  voyait  il  y  a  250  ans.  Cependant,  il  est  rare  qu'un 
homme  ait  une  vision  sans  qu'un  autre  ne  Fait  aussi,  et 
il  paralt  qu'a  l'epoque  ou  Rembrandt  peignait,  quelques 
annees  plus  tard,  un  Francais  a  entendu  Tame  feminine 
comme  le  murmure  d'une  eau  douce.  Racine,  parait-il, 
a  non  seulement  concu  de  grands  r61es  de  femme,  mais 
il  y  a  verse  toute  l'intimite  de  la  femme  jusqu'aux  secrets 
les  plus  profonds  de  son  cceur.  Je  dis  parait-il,  parce 
que  des  amis  me  Font  dit  et  je  m'en  fie  a  leur  jugement. 
II  n'y  a  pas  moyen  de  faire  autrement,  car  la  lecture  ne 
m'apprend  rien,  pas  plus  que  la  representation.  C'est 
avec  regret  que  je  confesse  que  la  litterature  de  ce  que 
vous  appelez  votre  Grand  Siecle  m'est  completement 
fermee,  surtout  les  tragedies  de  Racine  et  de  Corneille. 
Je  dis  que  je  le  regrette,  car  l'absence  dun  sens  est 
toujours  regrettable.  Mais,  comme  le  malheur  ne  porte 
que  sur  moi,  on  ne  me  demandera  pas  de  repandre  des 
cendres  sur  ma  t£te,  de  dechirer  mes  vetements.  II  serait 
tout  a  fait  suffisant,  pour  arriver  a  une  entente  cordiale, 
que  je  dise  que  l'hemistiche  et  la  rime  empechent  la 
psychologie  des  personnages  de  venir  jusqu'a  moi.  Le 
vers  rime  me  semble  delicieux,  pourvu  que  le  sujet  soit 
leger  et  fantaisiste.  Mais  je  m'apercois  que  je  rentre 
dans  la  voie  des  explications,  et  je  m'arrete.  En  tous 
cas,  les  femmes  de  Racine  etaient  toutes  des  princesses, 
des  femmes  nobles,  eloignees  des  tristesses  humbles  et 
quotidiennes,  et  vivant  dans  l'emotion  abstraite  et,  quand 
je  pense  a  la  femme,  c'est  a  l'etre  qui  reste  au  logis, 
triste  et  r6signee,  comme  Eugenie  Grandet,  qui,  une 
fois  dans  sa  vie,  a  eu  un  amour:  je  ne  me  rappelle  plus 
pour  le  moment  quelles  circonstances  lui  ont  fait  perdre 
son  bonheur;  je  me  souviens  d'elle  comme  d'une  creature 
echouee.  Rembrandt  a  bien  devine  la  melancolie  de  la 
femme  qui  n'est  pas  aimee,  qui  est  seule  dans  la  vie; 


248  AVOWALS 

et  Balzac,  puisqu'il  a  tout  devine,  Pa  devinee  aussi. 
L'odalisque  existe  encore  dans  notre  litterature,  mais 
dans  la  mauvaise;  nous  la  voyons  aussi  au  Salon,  mais 
toujours  dans  la  mauvaise  peinture,  et,  je  crois  que  vous 
§tes  de  mon  avis:  lorsque  nous  avons  fait  quelque  chose 
d'un  peu  mieux  que  d'habitude,  c'est  a  Eugenie  Grandet 
que  nous  songeons.  Elle  est  la  seule  femme  qui  se 
trouve  parmi  les  personnages  qui  viennent  a  l'esprit, 
quand  on  pense  a  la  ComSdie  Humaine.  II  y  en  a  d'autres, 
mais  je  ne  me  souviens  pas  du  nom  de  la  vieille  fille,  ni 
de  la  charmante  creature  dans  Les  Parents  Pauvres; 
ce  dernier  oubli  est  impardonnable:  ce  nom  est-il  Peir- 
rette?  Qu-importe?  II  n'y  a  pas  beaucoup  plus  de 
femmes  en  Balzac  qu'en  Shakespeare  et  Balzac  est  le 
dernier  ecrivain  qui  s'interessait  suffisamment  a  l'eternel 
masculin  pour  en  faire  le  fond  de  son  ceuvre.  Depuis, 
Teternel  feminin  est  partout,  absorbant  les  arts  et  les 
metiers,  cherchant  maintenant  a  s'emparer  de  la  politique 
et  gagnant  la  couronne  du  martyre,  c'est-a-dire  un,  deux, 
ou  trois  mois  de  prison,  comme  les  journaux  d'octobre 
dernier  nous  Font  appris. 

La  foi  de  Shakespeare  et  de  Balzac  dans  Feternel 
masculin  relie  le  grand  genie  de  votre  pays  a  celui  du 
mien.  II  y  a  d'autres  liens  encore.  Shakespeare  a  com- 
pris,  comme  Balzac,  qu'un  ecrivain  trouve  son  affaire 
dans  le  monde  des  humbles  plutot  que  dans  le  haute, 
parmi  les  declasses  de  toutes  sortes,  les  soudards,  les 
chemineaux,  les  souteneurs,  les  filles  de  joie  et  leurs 
patronnes. 

Cela  me  fait  de  la  peine  d'etre  du  meme  avis  que 
Tolstoi;  pourtant  je  le  suis,  quand  il  dit  que  Falstaff  est 
ce  qu'il  y  a  de  plus  universal  et  de  plus  original  dans 
Pceuvre  de  Shakespeare;  mais  pas  du  tout  quand  il  dit  que 
Falstaff  est  le  seul  caractere  dans  Pceuvre  de  Shakespeare, 
parlant  toujours  une  langue  qui  lui  soit  propre  et  dont  les 
actions  et  les  paroles  soient  en  accord.    Cette  critique  est 


AVOWALS  249 

Tolstoi  tout  en  tier;  l'idee  fausse  bien  deguisee;  car,  sans 
contredit  Hamlet  est  la  pensee  secrete  de  tous  les  hommes, 
de  Tolstoi  peut-£tre  plus  sou  vent  que  de  tous  les  autres. 
Aussitot  que  l'intelligence  se  revele  dans  une  homme,  il  est 
pret  a  se  croire  Hamlet.  Hamlet  est  l'hieroglyphe  et  le 
symbole  de  l'intelligence;  Falstaff  est  le  symbole  et 
l'arabesque  de  la  chair.  Mais  la  chair  de  Falstaff  est 
penetree  de  rihtelligence  d'Hamlet.  La  chair  de  Falstaff 
jase,  et  sa  jaserie  est  douce  et  gentille,  comme  celle  des 
oiseaux  qui  se  reveillent  le  matin;  elle  est  a  moitie  con- 
sciente,  car  Falstaff  aime  son  gros  ventre,  sachant  que 
c'est  son  ventre  qui  le  relie  avec  le  monde  en  dessous  et 
audessus  de  lui.  Son  ventre  le  rend  un  peu  pantheiste, 
car  le  ventre  est  ce  que  nous  avons  tous  en  commun;  le 
ventre  est  la  base  de  l'existence  chez  les  animaux  aussi 
bien  que  chez  les  hommes.  Les  oiseaux  ont  des  ailes,  les 
poissons  ont  des  nageoires:  mais  tout  ce  qui  vit  a  un 
ventre;  done  Falstaff,  qui  est  ventre,  et  rien  que  ventre, 
est  Timage  de  l'existence  terrestre.  Les  anciens  avaient 
S'ilene,  mais  Silene  ne  parlait  pas,  tandis  que  Falstaff  parle 
avec  abondance;  et  Shakespeare  a  cu  soin  que  son  lan- 
gage  fut  aussi  materialiste  que  l'organe  qu'il  represente  si 
bien.  II  y  avait  grand  danger  qu'il  devint  un  symbole 
vide,  mais  le  genie  de  Shakespeare  a  sauvegarde  sa  per- 
sonnalite  jusqu'a  sa  mort.  La  muse  lyrique  de  Shake- 
speare, qui  se  cachait  de  Falstaff,  est  sortie  au  moment  ou 
le  gros  homme  allait  mourir  et  elle  a  mis  dans  sa  bouche 
de  nobles  phrases.  Mais  tout  de  meme,  jusqu'au  dernier 
soupir,  Falstaff,  est  reste  Falstaff.  Hamlet  est  le  centre 
d'une  piece;  Falstaff  se  montre  dans  plusieurs;  le  perdre 
serait  un  malheur  qui  ne  pourrait  jamais  &tre  repare,  et 
s'il  f allait  choisir  entre  les  deux,  hesiter,  meme  si  l'hesita- 
tion  ne  durait  qu'un  moment,  serait  impardonnable. 

Apres  avoir  chante  les  cimes  et  les  forets  Wagner  a 
compose  Les  Maitres  Chanteurs,  parce  qu'il  fallait  chanter 
aussi   le   foyer.  II   me   semble   que   Shakespeare    a   du 


250  AVOWALS 

eprouver  le  besoin  de  decrire  l'intelligence  apres  avoir 
decrit  cette  materialists.  Mon  Dieu,  comme  il  a  fallu  etre 
poete  pour  decrire  cette  masse  de  chair  falote!  Dans  les 
scenes  comiques  et  extravagantes  on  ne  peut  se  passer  du 
poete  une  minute;  il  faut  qu'il  soit  la  a  chaque  mot  et  il 
faut  qu'on  soit  Shakespeare  ou  Aristophane,  quand  le 
langage  est  grossier.  II  a  fallu  plus  de  genie  pour  ecrire 
la  scene  fossoyeurs  dans  Hamlet,  que  le  celebre  mono- 
logue etre  ou  ne  pas  &tre.  Jamais  Shakespeare  ne  fut  si 
grand  poete,  que  lorsqu'il  peignit  des  personnages  com- 
iques, tel  que  Touchstone,  le  pitre  qui  a  suivi  les  amoureux 
dans  la  foret  d'Arden.  Je  ne  sais  si  un  peu  du  charme  de 
la  scene  entre  Touchstone  et  les  bergers  transpire  dans  la 
traduction  franchise.  Je  l'espere,  mais  je  ne  souviens  pas 
d'un  seul  poete  capable  de  la  faire  passer  dans  la  langue 
frangaise,  sauf  Banville  peut-£tre.  Le  caprice  de  cette 
scene  aurait  captive  l'esprit  si  capricieux  de  votre  poete, 
et  le  mariage  du  bouffon  avec  l'affreuse  paysanne  Audrey 
Faurait  ravi.  Touchstone  se  rend  completement  compte 
combien  Audrey  est  rebutante  et  sotte,  mais  cela  va  a 
son  humeur  ironique  de  l'epouser.  Apres  avoir  epuise 
Tironie  dans  les  paroles  il  la  cherche  maintenant  dans  la 
vie  reelle,  et  la  pauvre  folle  le  suit  charmee  par  la 
musique  de  ses  grelots.  On  se  souvient  de  La  Douzieme 
Nuit  ou  Malvolio  le  fat,  pur  faire  plaisir  aux  femmes,  en- 
dosse  des  deguisements  ridicules,  et  ou  les  trois  bons- 
hommes — Sir  Toby  Belch,  Sir  Andrew  Auguecheek  et  le 
clown — se  posent  des  questions.  Dans  ces  comedies,  nous 
sommes  a  peine  sortis  du  folk-lore,  et  Banville  aurait  du 
les  traduire  car,  seul  parmi  vous,  il  savait  mettre  la  logique 
a  la  porte.  La  MSgere  apprivoisSe  se  passe  dans  la  m£me 
atmosphere  de  reve;  il  aurait  respire  a  pleins  poumons; 
et  dans  les  Joyeuses  Commeres  de  Windsor  (comme  cela 
fait  plaisir  d'ecrire  ces  beaux  titres),  le  delicieux  poete 
aurait  rencontre  Falstaff  chez  Mistress  Ford,  et  il  est 


AVOWALS  251 

facile  d'imaginer  la  joie  qu'il  aurait  eprouvee  a  lui  serrer 
la  main. 

Vous  me  direz  que  rien  de  tout  cela  ne  se  trouve  dans 
Balzac.  Je  ne  suis  pas  de  votre  avis;  il  y  a  plus  d'inven- 
tion  et  de  fantaisie  dans  la  ComSdieHumaine  que  dans  les 
ceuvres  de  tout  autre  auteur.  N'a-t-il  pas,  dans  les  Conies 
Drolatiques,  fait  revivre  le  xvie  siecle  dans  son  esprit  et 
dans  sa  langue?  Et  n'est-il  pas  presque  le  seul  parmi 
vous  qui  ait  su  ecrire  le  boniment?  Le  bonimentl 
Qu'est-ce  done  que  le  boniment?  Le  dictionnaire  me 
dit  qu'on  appelle  ainsi:  l'annonce  charlatanesque  que  le 
pitre  fait  dans  sa  parade.  Eh,  bien,  il  faut  etendre  la 
signification  du  mot;  le  boniment,  e'est  Y inspiration  origi- 
nate. Possede  par  les  mots,  le  pitre  se  depouille  de  la 
realite  quotidienne,  et,  dans  son  extase,  il  devient  le  frere, 
au  moins  le  cousin  germain,  du  prophete  et  du  poete.  Tous 
les  trois  parlent  sans  souci  de  ce  qu'ils  vont  dire,  tandis 
que  rhomme  de  talent  le  sait  fort  bien.  Au  lieu  d'etre 
l'esclave  de  la  pensee,  le  verbe  devient  le  maitre  et  il 
l'entraine  en  la  forgant  a  faire  des  culbutes  dans  l'herbe,  et 
des  sauts  vertigineux  vers  les  etoiles.  Prophete,  pitre  ou 
poete,  le  verbe  est  ton  guide,  et  tu  te  rejouis  du  tumulte 
des  mots  et  des  images,  sans  savoir  ni  comment  ni  d'ou 
ils  viennent.  Le  reste  est  raison,  logique,  talent.  Le 
boniment,  e'est  la  couronne,  le  manteau,  la  besace  et  le 
bourdon  des  maitres  d'autrefois,  et  la  fard,  la  perruque  et 
la  canne  a  pommeau  dore  des  maitres  d'ajourd'hui.  Peut- 
&tre  y  a-t-il  plus  de  boniment  dans  la  litterature  anglaise 
que  dans  la  votre.  Mon  Dieu!  qu'est-ce  que  je  dis? 
Rabelais,  le  grande  maitre  du  boniment,  vivait  un  siecle 
avant  Shakespeare.  Quel  oubli !  Mais  parmi  vos  auteurs 
modernes  je  ne  me  souviens  pas  d'un  seul.  Si,  Victor 
Hugo!  Un  si  grand  maitre  de  la  langue  n'aurait  pas  su 
s'en  passer;  mais  il  me  semble — je  tache  d'eviter  tout  ce 
qui  touche  a  la  polemique — il  me  semble  tout  de  m£me, 
que  Ton  peut  tout  trouver  chez  Hugo,  tout, — sauf  la 


252  AVOWALS 

saveur  de  la  vie,  qui,  aussi,  bien  que  celle  de  la  langue,  est 
essentielle.  Mais  je  me  souviens  des  Choses  vues.  Comme 
il  a  bien  fait  parler  Mile  George  qui  est  venue  chez  lui, 
vieille  et  dechue,  pour  lui  dire  que  Rachel  manquait 
d'egards  en  vers  elle! 

II  vaut  mieux  laisser  Victor  Hugo  de  cote,  autrement 
je  n'en  sortirais  pas.  II  s'agit  de  Balzac.  J'aurais  voulu 
ouvrir  un  roman  de  Balzac  et  vous  lire  certains  passages; 
mais  les  questions  artistiques  ne  se  decident  pas  avec  des 
textes;  Tart  s'adresse  a  notre  sensibilite  plutot  qu'a  notre 
raison.  Notre  sensibilite  change  de  jour  en  jour  et  elle 
depend  des  circonstances.  Les  memes  passages  de  Balzac 
qui,  autrefois,  m'avaient  fait  penser  a  Shakespeare,  lus  a 
haute  voix  aujourd'hui,  pourraient  me  sembler  tout  diffe- 
rents.  Pourtant  je  ne  voudrais  pas  rester  sur  une  simple 
affirmation  et  vous  trouveriez  la  plaisanterie  mauvaise,  si 
je  vous  conseillais  de  vous  enfermer  chez  vous  pour  lire 
Shakespeare  et  Balzac.  La  Come  die  Humaine  a  cinquante 
volumes;  Shakespeare  a  laisse  trente-sept  drames;  des 
annees  et  des  annees  passeraient  et  vous  seriez  encore  la 
cherchant  des  textes  que  j'ai  trouves  par  hasard,  et  il  y  a 
bien  longtemps.  Je  vais  tout  avouer.  Une  nuit,  je  lisais 
Shakespeare,  et  une  scene  entre  charretiers  et  palefreniers 
m'a  tellement  plu  que,  pendant  des  jours,  je  ne  songeais 
qu'a  la  beaute  du  dialogue,  a  cette  langue  erudite  et 
populaciere.  A  la  fin  de  la  semaine,  par  un  hasard  litte- 
raire,  j'ouvris  CSsar  Birotteau  a  la  page  ou  le  parfumeur  va 
a  la  halle  acheter,  des  noisettes  pour  fabriquer  sa  fameuse 
huile.  Au  lieu  de  se  contenter  de  raconter,  comme  tout 
autre  Paurait  fait,  qu'apres  avoir  marchande  il  finite  par 
acheter  quelques  milliers  de  francs  de  noisettes,  Balzac 
decrit  toute  la  scene  avec  la  marchande.  Remarquez 
bien  que  la  marchande  n'est  pas  un  caractere  dans  le 
roman :  on  ne  la  revoit  plus.  C'est  done  uniquement  pour 
le  plaisir  d'entendre  son  boniment  que  Balzac  Fa  fait 
parler.    Shakespeare,  me  suis-je  dit,  a  fait  parler  le  pale- 


AVOWALS  253 

frenier  et  le  charretier  pour  la  meme  raison.  Quelques 
pages  plus  loin,  Balzac  conduit  son  lecteur  chez  l'illustre 
Gaudissart,  le  commis-voyageur  de  genie,  et  il  fait  debiter 
tout  son  metier  dans  un  jargon  epouvantable  et  charmant. 
Ce  n'est  pas  de  la  stenographic,  mais  une  reconstitution 
litteraire  penetree  de  l'esprit  de  Balzac.  Veuillez  lire  les 
passages  indiques  et  s'ils  ne  vous  satisfont  pas  entierement, 
tournez  les  feuilles  d'un  autre  roman  et  vous  trouverez, 
j'en  suis  sur,  des  passages  qui  reussiront  mieux  a  vous  con- 
vaincre,  peut-etre  bien  parce  que  c'est  vous  qui  les  aurez 
trouves  et  mon  pas  moi. 

Vous  savez  tous  que  Shakespeare  a  beaucoup  ecrit  en 
prose  et  que  sa  prose  est  aussi  belle  que  ses  vers;  les  vers 
de  Shakespeare  sont  rarement  rimes;  il  passe  avec  aisance 
de  la  prose  aux  vers  et  des  vers  a  la  prose.  Comme 
versificateur,  il  fut  aussi  fort  que  Balzac  etait  faible. 
Dans  son  etude  sur  le  grand  romancier,  Gautier  releve  un 
vers  tout  a  fait  extraordinaire,  car  dans  les  douze  syllabes 
Balzac  a  trouve  moyen  de  faire  trois  fautes  de  prosodie. 
Dans  Les  Illusions  Perdues,  Balzac  attribue  a  Lucien  de 
Rubempre  trois  sonnets  ecrits  dans  les  styles  les  plus 
differents.  La  Tulipe  est  de  Gautier,  La  Marguerite  est 
de  Mme  de  Giradin;  je  ne  crois  pas  qu'on  sache  qui  a 
ecrit  la  troisieme.  De  tous  les  hommes  au  monde,  il  etait, 
peut-etre,  le  plus  insensible  a  la  beaute  des  vers,  et,  comme 
il  vivait  a  une  epoque  ou  tout  le  monde  aimait  la  poesie, 
excepte  lui,  il  est  probable  que  as  haine — car  il  fallait  bien 
qu'il  hait  les  vers,  autrement  il  n'aurait  pas  decrit  Canalis 
— a  beaucoup  aide  a  creer  la  legende  que  Balzac  ne  savait 
pas  ecrire  le  frangais.  II  suffit  de  peu  de  chose  pour  creer 
une  legende.  Balzac  ecrivait  avec  abondance,  il  ecrivait, 
avec  une  grande  f  acilite,  il  a  ecrit  de  sa  main  La  cousine  Bette 
en  quarante  nuits.  II  y  a  des  negligences  de  style,  meme 
des  incorrections;  il  y  en  a  aussi  dans  Shakespeare; 
Tincorrection  est  toujours  regrettable,  mais  elle  ne  prouve 
pas  qu'un  auteur  ne  soit  pas  un  ecrivain  de  souche.     Pire 


254  AVOWALS 

que  l'incorrection  est  l'effort;  des  l'instant  ou  le  critique 
remarque  que  l'auteur  fait  un  effort,  il  a  presque  toujours 
raison  de  conclure  que  le  livre  n'est  pas  ecrit  par  un  grand 
ecrivain.  Autrefois  je  croyais  que  le  talent  consistait  dans 
la  recherche  de  l'epithete  rare,  mais  je  ne  le  crois  plus; 
je  sais  maintenant  ou  cela  conduit.  Voulez-vous  que  je 
vous  cite  un  exemple?  Dans  les  premieres  pages  de 
Saldmmbo,  Flaubert  fait  des  efforts  desesperes  pour  repre- 
senter  les  sons  des  differentes  langues  qu'on  entend  chez 
les  mercenaires.  II  dit  qu'on  entendait  a  c6te  du  lourd 
patois  dorien  retentir  les  syllabes  cultiques  bruissantes 
comme  des  chars  de  bataille,  et  les  terminaisons  ioniennes 
se  heurtaient  aux  consonnes  du  desert,  apres  commedes 
cris  de  chacal.  Je  ne  crois  plus  au  clair  de  lune  qui,  dans 
la  grande  scene  d'amour  de  Mme  Bovary,  se  reflete  dans 
le  fleuve,  d'abord  comme  un  candelabre  et  puis  comme  un 
serpent  aux  ecailles  d'argent.  Et,  si  possible,  je  crois 
encore  moins  aux  lacets  du  corset  de  Mme  Bovary  qui 
sifflaient  comme  des  serpents,  quand  elle  se  deshabillait  a 
l'auberge. 

Mais  il  me  semble  que  je  m'eloigne  de  mon  sujet;  les 
angoisses  que  Flaubert  eprouvait  en  ecrivant  seraient  le 
sujet  d'une  autre  conference.  J'espere  qu'elle  sera  ecrite 
bientot;  j'aurai  beaucoup  de  plaisir  a  l'ecouter.  La 
mienne,  sur  Balzac  et  Shakespeare,  est  finie;  mais  avant 
des  nous  separer,  je  voudrais  vous  remercier  de  la  grande 
complaisance  que  vous  avez  mise  a  ecouter  la  parole  d'un 
barbare.  Ce  n'est  pas  la  premiere  fois,  que  j'essaie  d'ecrire 
dans  votre  langue;  j'avais  deja  quelques  flirts  dans  mon 
passe,  des  strophes,  des  rondeaux,  des  ballades  ...  en 
somme  des  amour  courtes  et  sans  importance.  Mais 
cette  conference  a  dure  bien  plus  longtemps;  elle  con- 
stitue  une  veritable  infidelite  a  ma  langue  maternelle; 
une  liaison  d'un  mois  qui  m'a  fait  beaucoup  souffrir.  Et 
le  resultat  de  cette  liaison  est  si  mediocire,  que  je  me 
suis  decide  a  rompre  et  a  ne  plus  recommencer. 


AVOWALS  255 


CHAPTER  14. 


AS  soon  as  I  returned  from  the  stage,  the  director  of  La 
Revue  Bleue  drew  me  aside  and  said:  you  read  your 
lecture  very  well;  but  why  didn't  you  read  it  like  that  to 
me?  And  while  I  searched  for  a  suitable  answer,  the 
appearance  of  Mademoiselle  Richenberg  brought  a  light 
of  divination  into  his  face,  and  he  said :  you  know  Made- 
moiselle Richenberg? 

Of  course  many  friends  came  to  tell  me  that  I  had  not 
lost  my  voice,  and  that  every  word  had  been  heard, 
et  que  ma  confSrence  est  une  des  plus  jolie  de  ce  temps-ci. 
Even  la  grande  diseuse  had  a  compliment  for  me,  and  in  a 
mood  of  satisfaction  at  not  having  failed  altogether  in  my 
enterprise  (if  that  word  does  not  exaggerate  the  import- 
ance of  going  to  Paris  to  deliver  a  lecture  on  Shakespeare 
and  Balzac)  I  returned  home  to  my  hotel,  the  excitement 
of  addressing  a  French  audience  evaporating  as  I  passed 
street  after  street,  till  on  reaching  the  Rond  Point  I 
stopped,  brought  to  bay :  after  all,  what  have  I  done  but 
deliver  a  lecture?  A  commonplace  event  enough.  A  little 
later  I  took  a  different  view  and  walked,  assuring  myself 
with  much  complacency  that  my  lecture  was  quite  differ- 
ent from  the  amorphous  spouting  with  which  the  pro- 
fessional lecturer  seeks  to  entertain  an  audience.  And 
with  which,  I  added,  sadly,  he  produces  better  entertain- 
ment than  my  elaborate  composition,  elaborate,  yet  not 
elaborate  enough,  for  in  a  foreign  language  one  cannot  re- 
weave.  And  deep  in  meditation  I  pursued  my  way  through 
the  scintillating  Champs  Elysees,  saying:  it  is  not  till  the 
third  weaving  that  my  little  patterns  begin  to  appear;  in 
the  first  two  I  am  like  everybody  else,  and  on  these  words 
my  thoughts  fell  suddenly  into  recollections  of  the  sum- 
mer I  had  spent  in  Dublin,  returning  to  the  text  whenever 
I  found  myself  alone,  amplifying  and  enriching  it  and  with 


256  AVOWALS 

good  results,  for  my  lecture  contained  some  pretty  bits; 
but  I  had  not  been  able  to  pick  the  woof  to  threads  again 
and  re-weave,  the  labour  of  re-weaving  in  a  foreign  lan- 
guage being  too  great.  Or  was  it  laziness?  No;  I  am 
never  lazy  when  literature  calls.  Or  was  it  that  nine 
thousand  words  are  too  many  to  concentrate  on  in  a 
foreign  language?  My  English  tangles  very  often,  and 
the  knots  are  hard  to  untie,  I  cried,  and  remembering  that 
I  had  not  spent  more  time  on  the  French  text  than  I  had 
on  many  an  English,  I  continued:  Words  I  have  always 
and  in  abundance,  and  an  ear  for  rhythm;  my  enduring 
foe  is  composition;  and  it  was  to  composition  that  I  suc- 
cumbed rather  than  to  language,  unless  it  be  contended 
that  in  English  I  should  have  had  more  courage  and 
would  have  pulled  the  whole  thing  to  threads  and  re- 
woven  it. 

How  that  verb  to  weave  bores  me,  I  murmured,  and 
I  tried  to  cast  the  lecture  out  of  my  head,  and  succeeded 
in  doing  so  for  a  little  while,  but  it  was  back  again  pres- 
ently; and  at  the  Place  de  la  Concorde  my  thoughts  were 
at  flirt  with  the  belief  that  it  were  easier  to  write  in 
French  about  things  than  abstractions;  and  as  a  lecture 
must  be  largely  subjective  it  would  seem  that  mine  should 
have  been  written  in  English  and  translated  into  French. 
But  a  translator's  French  brings  my  stomach  up.  It  did 
that  and  copiously  when  Esther  Waters  was  translated  by 
a  retired  custom-house  officer,  and  a  third  of  the  text, 
one  hundred  pages  eliminated  by  a  journalist  (four  hun- 
dred quarter  pages)  so  that  it  might  be  made  to  fit  the 
format  that  Hachette  insisted  upon,  fool  that  he  is, 
treating  me  as  he  treated  Tourgueneff,  for  experience 
throws  light  only  on  the  waters  we  have  passed  through, 
none  on  those  that  lie  ahead  of  us.  How  true.  Good 
God,  how  true!  Again  I  pursued  my  way,  dreaming  of 
the  hour  that  had  gone  by  till  the  thought  of  a  bit  of 
criticism  that  I  had  not  been  able  to  introduce  into  the 


AVOWALS  257 

text  stopped  me  in  my  walk,  and  I  stood  thinking  that 
this  overlooked  bit  of  criticism  would  have  set  forth  more 
plainly  than  anything  in  the  lecture  the  difference  between 
the  seventeenth  and  the  twentieth  century.  So  it  was  in 
a  great  humour  of  dissatisfaction  that  I  set  forth  again, 
turning  over  in  my  mind  the  scene  I  had  selected  to  show 
two  great  intelligences  in  the  practice  of  their  art,  the  scene 
between  Juliet  and  her  nurse;  the  nurse  coming  to  Juliet, 
saying:  he  is  dead,  he  is  dead,  he  is  dead!  She  is  speaking 
of  Tybalt,  but  Juliet  in  her  great  stress  of  mind  believes 
Romeo  the  one  dead,  and  forthwith  breaks  into  speech 
too  rhetorical  to  be  accepted  as  an  expression  of  true 
grief.  No  doubt  the  critical  fraternity  have  found  the 
wording  of  Juliet's  grief  lacking  in  that  simplicity  which 
is  part  of  grief,  but  it  is  not  to  the  wording  of  the  scene 
that  I  was  minded  to  call  their  attention,  but  to  Shake- 
speare's shallow  comprehension  of  it:  for  after  setting  his 
heroine  bewailing  her  lover  with  all  the  eloquence  he  can 
supply  her  with,  he  sets  her  bewailing  her  kinsman  immedi- 
ately after,  and  with  the  same  eloquence,  thereby  departing 
from  true  grief,  which  always  weeps  with  undivided  mind. 
But  of  a  certainty  Balzac  would  have  felt  that  Juliet 
could  have  had  no  thought  for  her  kinsman's  death,  not 
then  at  least:  he  would  have  made  a  point  of  it,  showing 
how  joy  overpowers  grief,  leaving  grief  without  words, 
mayhap,  without  a  tear;  and  this  natural  stint  of  the  heart 
would  have  cheered  Balzac's  genius  to  carry  the  scene 
beyond  the  imagination  of  the  world's  greatest  poet.  But 
thou'rt  pitting  sunrise  against  midday,  the  Shakespearean 
critic  will  cry,  which  is  true,  for  Shakespeare  was  a  young 
man  when  he  wrote  Romeo  and  Juliet;  his  inward  gaze 
had  strengthened  when  he  rewrote  Hamlet;  but  the 
waxing  of  Shakespeare's  mind  is  not  part  of  this  exam- 
ination but  the  presumption  that  Balzac,  at  the  height  of 
his  genius,  would  have  tried  for  something  more  than 
Shakespeare  tried  for. 


258  AVOWALS 

As  all  will  yield  this  point  without  squabble  it  will  be 
no  more  than  fair  to  the  poet  to  consider  if  the  depths  of 
the  human  mind  which  Balzac  might  descend  into  in 
his  narrative  and  make  plain  and  convincing  could  be 
dealt  with  on  the  meagre  stage;  and  if  Shakespeare  did 
not  do  well  to  welcome  rhetoric  in  this  issue  of  drama, 
for,  as  has  often  been  said,  the  first  obligation  of  the 
artist  is  to  find  his  strength  in  his  medium.  Even  so, 
the  question  has  not  been  disposed  of,  for  by  accepting 
the  alleged  stint  of  his  medium  Shakespeare  puts  his 
actress  in  a  quandary,  his  actress  being  part  of  his 
medium;  and  the  quandary  lies  in  this,  that  the  mime 
cannot  dismiss  contradictions  and  discrepancies  airily 
like  the  critic,  saying  that  they  are  part  and  parcel 
of  the  man's  genius.  Much  more  than  the  critic  the 
mime  is  part  and  parcel  of  the  poet's  genius;  she  is  it 
and  it  is  she,  indivisibly  as  body  and  soul.  She  has 
become  part  and  parcel  of  her  creator — a  transubstantia- 
tion  that  we  can  appreciate  in  this  one.  Her  voice  passing 
away  from  her  becomes  Juliet's,  and  all  her  body  pulses 
with  Juliet's  passion;  her  ideas,  her  gestures,  her  gait 
are  of  Verona;  and  every  line  and  word  in  the  text  that 
is  not  with  her  is  against  her.  So  it  must  be  allowed 
that  the  scene  between  Juliet  and  the  nurse  is  a  pause, 
a  seventh  day  in  which  the  creator  undoes  his  work  in 
failing  to  supply  the  mime  with  true  nature,  giving  her 
instead  a  spout  of  words  with  which  she  may  be  able  to 
conceal  his  shortcomings  and  get  for  herself  peradventure 
such  a  clapping  of  hands  as  will  drown  that  voice  of 
conscience  which  awakens  in  every  woman  who  essays 
the  part.  But  can  it  be  that  none  before  me  has  per- 
ceived this  disparity,  no  other  critic?  But  whether  the 
first  or  last  it  is  certain  that  every  one  of  the  women  who 
has  passed  out  of  herself  into  Juliet  did  not  do  so  with- 
out feeling  this  scene  to  drop;  and  none  perchance  so 
acutely  as  the  bad  mime,  for  she  who  is  possessed  of 


AVOWALS  259 

reason  says  to  herself:  we  may  not  grieve  equally  for 
two  misfortunes,  and  of  all  no  one  grieves  when  her 
heart  is  overflowing  with  joy  at  her  lover's  escape  from 
death. 

And  this  poor  mime  meditates  and  ponders,  her  acting 
getting  worse  and  worse  (we  are  supposing  the  show  to 
be  her  own,  for  if  it  were  not  she  would  have  been  cast 
out  long  ago),  till  one  night,  after  a  depressing  talk  with 
the  manager,  a  hope  quickens  in  her  that  though  the 
tangle  is  beyond  her  powers  to  unravel  a  psychologist 
might  help  her.  She  has  read  novels,  and  there  is  one 
among  the  novelists  who  can  weigh  such  trifles,  whether  a 
woman  should  accept  a  cup  of  tea  or  reject  it,  so  the  poor 
mime  says :  It  will  not  be  difficult  for  him  to  distinguish 
between  two  griefs.  She  goes  to  him,  her  heart  swelling 
with  hope,  and  we  may  pass  a  moment  profitably  in  the 
contemplation  of  the  twain  sitting  beside  each  other;  the 
pale  and  drawn  face  of  the  agitated  mime,  and  the  large, 
impassive,  shaven  face  of  the  Bostonian  psychologist  hold- 
ing his  chin,  seeking  for  words,  and  in  such  painful  conges- 
tion of  phrase  is  he  that  the  bad  mime  begins  to  fear  lest 
her  rash  adventure  will  precipitate  an  attack  of  apoplexy. 
At  last  the  spasms  are  ended,  and  the  poor  lady  mime 
stands  lost  and  speechless  in  a  desert  of  qualifying  clauses. 

As  soon  as  this  amusement  of  my  imagination  had  died 
away,  and  I  passed  out  of  the  arcade,  I  said  to  myself :  But 
elsewhere  Shakespeare's  texts  are  often  in  conflict  with 
the  human  mind  and  its  instincts,  and  nowhere  more 
notably  than  in  Falstaff's  speeches;  and  I  walked  as  far 
as  the  H6tel  Continental,  immersed  in  regret  that  I  had 
classed  Falstaff  among  the  vast  humanities  of  our  poetry, 
and  it  was  not  till  I  reached  the  Rue  Castiglione  that, 
returning  to  the  subject  of  my  meditation,  Falstaff, 
I  said  it  would  be  interesting  to  persuade  the  actors 
who  had  played  him  to  relate  their  experiences,  but 
acting  springs  out  of  the  subconscious;  actors  feel,  dream, 


260  AVOWALS 

aspire,  but  reason  rarely,  unless  they  are  bad  actors;  we 
should  question  them  in  vain,  none  could  give  an  account 
of  himself  in  his  study  of  the  part.  But  is  this  sure? 
The  actor,  if  he  were  caught  unawares,  might  let  drop  an 
illuminating  phrase,  and  I  remembered  with  pleasure 
Rachel's  famous:  fai  bisquie.  As  soon  as  she  began  to 
suspect  and  to  hope  that  she  was  something  more  than 
a  girl  who  could  pick  up  a  livelihood  by  reciting  in  the 
cafes,  she  went  to  an  actor  for  advice,  saying  she 
thought  she  had  a  turn  for  the  stage.  After  hearing 
some  poems,  he  said:  You  have  a  nice  voice,  but  I 
cannot  tell  what  your  talent  may  be  till  I've  heard  you 
in  a  part.  He  gave  her  Berenice  to  study,  and  in  a  few 
days  she  returned  to  astonish  him  with  an  entirely  new 
reading,  and  with  an  acceptable  one.  How,  asked  the 
breathless  actor,  did  all  this  come  to  you?  and  his  astonish- 
ment was  not  lessened  when  she  told  him  that  she  had 
not  thought  about  the  character  at  all.  Nor  had  she 
even  read  the  play,  only  her  own  part.  I  tried  to  imagine, 
said  this  woman  of  great  genius,  that  it  was  all  happening 
to  me,  et  que  fai  bisquie. 

Nobody  had  ever  remarked  that  Berenice  sulked  till 
Rachel  discovered  her  in  a  sulk.  As  likely  as  not  Racine 
was  not  aware  of  it,  and  a  regret  welled  up  in  me  that  I 
had  never  taken  Weir  round  to  the  public-house  after  one 
of  his  performances  of  FalstafF,  and  asked  him  if  he  thought 
the  character  lent  itself  to  as  many  interpretations  as 
Hamlet  did,  or  some  other  question  even  more  likely 
to  lead  him  into  talk.  No  better  actor  than  Weir  ever 
lived,  yet  he  could  do  no  more  than  to  repeat  the  text 
of  the  play.  In  the  slang  of  the  theatre,  he  got  nothing 
on  it.  As  I  crossed  the  next  street  and  entered  the 
arcade  again  I  remembered  the  night  that  Tree  sent  one 
of  his  footmen  to  ask  me  to  come  to  see  him  in  his 
dressing-room.  The  invitation  was  opportune,  for  I  felt 
I  had  something  to  say  about  Falstaff ,  and  to  whom  could 


AVOWALS  261 

I  say  it  more  pointedly  than  to  Tree,  who  had  just  come 
off  the  stage  in  his  great  belly?  Your  Falstaff,  I  said  to 
him,  is  as  good  as  any  that  have  been,  and  none  will  be 
better,  but  the  part  has  been  intellectualised  out  of  all 
possibility  of  acting.  The  old  vice  that  Cervantes  fell 
into  in  the  second  part  of  Don  Quixote,  fell  into,  it  is  true, 
but  not  as  flagrantly  as  Shakespeare  did  when  he  set  the 
knight  musing  and  deciding  what  honour  is  and  what 
honour  is  not  at  the  end  of  the  scene  in  Shakespeare's 
version,  at  the  end  of  the  act  in  yours.  We  go  through 
our  lives,  Tree,  victims  of  conventions  and  prejudices, 
and  if  I  hadn't  come  into  the  theatre  to-night  it  is 
possible  that  I  should  never  have  apprehended  how 
entirely  artificial  and  vain  Falstaff  is,  and  all  the  way 
hither  my  imagination  was  soothed  with  the  entirely 
natural  character  of  Sancho,  who  would  provide  you,  I 
said,  with  a  much  better  acting  part.  It  cannot  be  that 
you  don't  agree  with  me,  Tree,  that  a  great  many  of 
Falstaff's  speeches  are  incompatible  with  his  character — 
briefly,  that  he  is  too  heavily  intellectualised  to  be  acted. 
Tree  did  not  answer;  but  it  was  plain  that  he  brooded 
over  what  I  had  said  and  was  becoming  aware  that  the 
part  of  Falstaff  contained  certain  irreconcilable  elements, 
and  that  all  he  had  missed  in  the  part  might  be  attributed 
to  Shakespeare. 

His  tacit  acquiescence  in  my  discovery  that  Falstaff 
was  not  an  acting  part  encouraged  me  to  remark  that  it 
was  very  odd  that  Tolstoy,  who  could  not  be  said  to  be 
committed  like  our  critics  to  praise  Shakespeare  in  and 
out  of  season,  when  he  is  right  and  when  he  is  wrong, 
especially  when  he  is  wrong,  thought  proper  to  remark 
that  Falstaff  is  the  only  character  in  Shakespeare's  plays 
whose  words  are  in  agreement  with  his  acts.  The  very 
opposite  is  the  truth  to  me,  and  you  are  of  the  same 
opinion,  Tree,  I  can  see  you  are;  it  could  not  be  else,  for 
you  have  lived  the  part.    But  those  who  have  studied  the 


262  AVOWALS 

texts Tree  began.  You  mean  those  who  read  Shake- 
speare twenty-three  hours  out  of  the  twenty-four,  as  Max 
says,  I  broke  in:  Sir  Sidney  Lee,  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  Sir 
Quiller  Couch,  all  the  many  Sirs;  for  everybody  who  has 
studied  the  text  of  Shakespeare  has  been  knighted: 
Shakespeare  is  served  by  a  vast  knighthood.  But  Tolstoy 
didn't  want  to  be  knighted,  and  I  confess  to  being 
puzzled  by  his  mistake.  But  no,  there  is  no  puzzle  in 
it,  for  it  was  Tolstoy's  prime  business  to  put  people 
wrong,  and  that  being  so,  Falstaff,  the  most  stagey  figure 
in  Shakespeare,  was  declared  to  be  the  most  natural. 
Get  thyself  to  Spain,  Tree,  and  quickly.  But  which  wilt 
thou  play?  Sancho,  or  the  Don?  Sancho  is  ourselves 
when  he  calls  for  the  island,  but  Falstaff  calls  for  sack 
only  for  that  the  audience  must  be  made  to  laugh,  and 
we  believe  in  him  neither  in  tipple  nor  in  love.  Of 
course,  I  should  play  the  Don.  But  why  this  bitter 
quarrel  with  Falstaff?  Tree  asked.  And  I  told  him  of  the 
purple  passage  in  my  lecture  in  which  Falstaff,  being  all 
belly,  is  said  to  be  the  symbol  and  hieroglyph  of  life: 
for  all  things,  whether  they  walk,  fly  or  crawl,  have 
bellies.  But  you  can  withdraw  the  passage,  said  Tree. 
No,  Tree,  I  cannot,  for  the  lecture  is  in  French,  and  I 
might  not  find  anything  as  good  to  replace  it,  but  I  am 
conscience-stricken  for  the  retaining  of  it. 

And  as  I  pursued  my  way  along  the  echoing  arcades 
it  seemed  to  me  that  this  conversation  about  Falstaff 
was  the  last  I  had  with  Tree;  and  I  might  have  medi- 
tated upon  my  dead  friend  till  I  was  well  past  the 
Hotel  Meurice,  if  it  had  not  been  that  thoughts  of  some- 
thing else  that  I  had  failed  to  include  in  my  lecture 
pursued  me  to  the  door  of  the  Hotel  Brighton,  causing 
me  to  halt  as  I  ascended  the  stairs,  causing  my  hands 
to  drop  from  my  cravat  and  to  leave  it  dangling,  while  I 
considered  how  it  was  that  I  had  omitted  to  quote  some 
passages  from  Madame  Bovary  even  more  ridiculous  than 


AVOWALS  263 

the  one  in  which  the  moon  looked  like  a  great  silver 
candelabra  at  the  bottom  of  the  river,  and  afterwards 
like  a  serpent  with  silver  scales. 

Christianity,  I  said,  on  entering  my  room,  is  not  a 
stranger  belief  than  the  cult  of  the  inevitable  word. 
This  strange  religion  arose  suddenly  in  a  small  country 
house  near  Rouen,  and  spread  quickly  from  thence  over 
the  entire  world  till  the  cow-boys  of  Texas  rode  after  the 
inflamed  heifer,  shouting:  She  ran  in  her  intrepid  naked- 
ness— referring  not  to  the  heifer,  but  to  some  fisher 
girl  who  ran  along  the  Boulogne  sands  in  her  pelt — in 
what  book  I  have  forgotten.  But  how  did  this  belief 
in  the  inevitable  word  arise?  Like  all  beliefs  and  diseases, 
mysteriously. 

In  the  fifties  was  the  Word  and  the  Word  was  with 
Flaubert,  I  said,  and  began  to  trace  the  origin  of  Flaubert's 
reputation  to  a  reaction  against  Byron's  Laras  and 
Corsairs,  his  going  to  Greece  to  die  for  an  idea,  to  Chateau- 
briand's tomb,  the  one  he  built  by  the  side  of  the  sounding 
sea  to  pirates  and  brigands  who  had  become  so  much 
more  intolerable  in  literature  than  in  reality  that  every- 
body welcomed  the  idea  that  a  writer  had  arisen  who  did 
not  try  to  dine  in  a  baronial  hall  among  retainers,  but 
was  satisfied  with  a  chop  at  home,  and  did  not  keep  for 
pets,  pythons,  eagles,  wolves  or  jaguars,  who  preferred 
cats,  and  spent  his  time  at  the  window  in  his  dressing- 
gown  watching  the  Seine  flowing  by,  thinking  all  the 
time  of  the  inevitable  Word,  which  he  never  found  till 
late  in  the  evening. 

It  was  easy  for  the  grocer  to  understand  that  it 
took  a  long  time  to  find  the  inevitable  Word;  for  he  had 
sought  it  himself  in  vain,  and  he  appreciated  Monsieur 
Flaubert,  who  wrote  with  difficulty  just  like  everybody 
else,  and  when  it  became  known  for  certain  that  Madame 
Bovary  was  written  in  a  dressing-gown,  the  reaction  against 
romanticism  carried  the  book  along  with  it.     A  better 


264  AVOWALS 

explanation  than  this  I  cannot  find  for  the  extraordinary 
belief  that  has  possessed  France  for  over  fifty  years,  and  if 
this  explanation  prove  inacceptable,  we  shall  have  to  hold 
by  the  somewhat  depressing  belief,  for  which,  indeed,  much 
can  be  said,  that  the  masterpiece  is  but  the  mood  of  the 
moment,  and  that  the  wisest  cannot  tell  an  inspired 
work  from  an  uninspired.  There  are  the  two  solutions,  my 
friend,  and  waste  not  your  time  trying  to  find  a  third. 

As  I  took  off  my  boots  I  remembered  Baudelaire,  who 
was  the  only  one  who  dared  to  write  coldly  about  this 
book,  and  if  he  knew,  others  must  have  known,  for  he 
was  not  as  clever  a  man  as  Gautier  or  Sainte-Beuve. 
And  many  others  must  have  known  that  Madame  Bovary 
was  not  as  well  written  a  book  as  EugSnie  Grandet.  But 
for  the  reason  that  I  have  given,  or  at  least  hinted  at, 
they  held  their  tongues;  they  too  were  duped  by  the 
mood  of  the  moment,  and  it  may  be  that  Gautier  felt 
it  were  better  to  teach  by  example  than  by  exhortation. 
Nor  were  they  the  first  to  acquiesce  in  the  universal  folly 
which  is  man.  Constantine  acquiesced  in  Christianity, 
and  Henry  IV  in  Catholicism.  But  we  must  not  suppose 
they  were  duped.  Nor  were  Gautier  and  Sainte-Beuve 
nor  was  Gerard  de  Nerval.  Baudelaire,  we  know,  was 
not.  But  what  is  all  this  to  me,  since  I  was  duped,  and 
to  the  top  of  my  bent?  Year  after  year  I  believed 
Madame  Bovary  and  L 'Education  Sentimentale  to  be  great 
works.  Good  God!  I  cried,  and  stopped  on  the  third 
button — that  article  published  in  Cosmopolis  will  one  day 
be  brought  up  against  me,  and  I  know  not  how  it  is  to  be 
destroyed,  unless  I  come  back  to  Paris  with  another 
lecture  in  which  I  shall  expose  the  stiff,  paralysed  narra- 
tive, the  short  sentence  trussed  like  a  fowl,  with  the 
inevitable  adjective,  in  the  middle  of  everyone.  To 
repent  is  a  great  temptation  and  it  is  hard  to  apprehend 
how  one  was  duped;  for  even  in  the  years  of  Cosmopolis 
I  must  have  known  that  the  writing  of  patter  represents 


AVOWALS  265 

the  highest  point  of  literary  skill;  and  so  slight  was 
Flaubert's  literary  skill  that  it  would  be  difficult  to  find  in 
&  Education  Sentimentale  three  consecutive  lines  of 
dialogue.  Arnaud  meets  Frederick  in  the  Boulevard. 
How  are  you?  said  he,  and  taking  Frederick's  arm  he 
spoke  to  him  for  half-an-hour  about  indifferent  things. 
Poor  old  fellow,  he  fell  into  this  formula  and  stuck  in  it. 
My  lecture  must  be  free  from  exaggeration,  for  although 
Flaubert  does  not  sit  on  the  throne,  he  is  entitled  to  a  seat 
on  the  steps  of  the  throne,  as  Yeats  would  say,  and  must 
not  be  hustled  out  of  the  throne-room  unceremoniously 
for  it  can  be  said  with  truth  that  he  was  better  than  his 
fellows,  better  than  Zola,  better  than  Daudet,  better  than 
Goncourt — for  this  last  one  I  have  still  a  leaning,  and 
despite  his  foolish  trivialities  we  remember  Manette 
Salomon!  It  will  be  enough  for  me  to  say  that  the 
business  of  a  narrator  is  to  narrate,  and  that  Flaubert 
had  little  or  nothing  to  narrate.  And  to  say  this  will  be 
justifiable,  and  to  point  out  that  a  narrative  should  never 
be  the  same,  but  always  moving,  and  to  make  my  meaning 
clear  I  shall  have  to  speak  of  Apuleius  and  his  Golden  Ass, 
saying:  a  delicious  dancing  narrative,  always  alive,  always 
sparkling  like  the  Odyssey,  for  Apuleius  spent  many  years 
of  his  life  in  Athens,  and  learnt  the  secrets  of  Greek 
narrative.  Everything  comes  from  Greece,  I  said,  and 
was  falling  asleep  when  a  remembrance  of  Fotis  awakened 
me,  and  I  said:  the  most  truly  human  love  scene  written 
for  eighteen  hundred  years,  neither  animal  nor  angelic, 
and  so  pretty,  as  graceful  as  a  kitten,  and  I  continued  till 
the  very  words  of  the  old  Roman  poet  began  singing  in 
my  head : 

She  had  about  her  middle  a  white  and  cleane  apron, 
and  she  was  girded  about  her  bodie  under  her  pappes 
with  a  swathell  of  redde  silke,  and  she  stirred  the  potte 
and  turned  the  meate  with  her  fayer  and  white  handes, 


zm  AVOWALS 

in  such  sorte  that  with  stirrings  and  turnings  the  same, 
her  loines,  and  hippes  did  likewise  move  and  shake, 
whiche  was  in  my  minde  a  comely  sight  to  see.  These 
things  when  I  sawe,  I  was  halfe  amased,  and  stoode 
musinge  with  my  selfe,  and  my  courage  came  then  upon 
me,  whiche  before  was  skant.  And  I  spake  unto  Fotis 
merely,  and  said:  0  Fotis,  how  trimly  you  can  stirre 
the  potte,  and  how  finelie  (with  shakinge  your  buttockes) 
you  can  make  potage.  O  happy  and  twise  happy  is  he 
to  whom  you  give  leave  and  license  but  to  touche  you 
there. 

We  have  been  writing  love  scenes  for  eighteen  hundred 
years,  yet  it  may  be  doubted  if  one  could  be  discovered 
as  free  from  subterfuge  and  deceit  as  Apuleius's  relation 
of  the  pleasure  he  felt  in  watching  the  swing  of  Fotis's 
hips  and  the  poise  of  her  body  as  she  moves  among  her 
pots  and  pans.  Be  it  noted  that  she  is  displayed  as  she 
would  wish  to  be,  for  what  young  girl  would  not  like  a 
young  man  to  admire  the  sway  of  her  hips?  It  requires 
great  talent  to  omit  all  sentimentality  and  to  keep  the 
thing  what  it  essentially  is — a  pretty  sight.  And  Apuleius 
has  done  this.  We  forget  that  the  girl  is  a  servant  girl, 
and  that  Apuleius  is  a  scholar,  and  that  the  twain  are  in 
the  kitchen.  We  forget  all  detail,  so  intense  and  com- 
plete is  the  humanity.  The  touch  is  exquisite  through- 
out, spontaneous  and  true;  and  never  more  so  than  when 
Fotis  promises  to  relieve  Apuleius  of  his  desire  and 
redeems  her  promise,  coming  to  him  when  he  lies  in 
bed  with  wine  and  flowers,  kissing  him  prettily.  And 
then  I  seemed  to  lose  control  over  my  thoughts,  and  must 
have  fallen  asleep  soon  after. 


AVOWALS  267 


CHAPTER  15 


MONSIEUR,  on  vous  demande,  the  page  cried.  What- 
time  is  it  ?  I  muttered,  turning  over,  ready  to  fall  asleep 
again.  Dix  heures,  monsieur.  And  already  somebody 
wants  to  see  me?  What's  his  name?  Void  sa  carte, 
monsieur.  As  soon  as  the  page  had  drawn  the  curtains 
I  read  a  name  almost  aristocratic,  and  the  name  of  a 
newspaper  known  for  its  distinguished  tone  and  literary 
associations.  Tell  the  gentleman  I'm  in  bed,  but  if  he 
doesn't  mind  coming  upstairs  I'll  see  him.  Bien,  monsieur, 
and  a  minute  or  two  later  a  young  Frenchman  came  into 
the  room,  apologising  for  his  visit,  giving  as  a  reason  that 
he  had  come  in  the  hope  of  obtaining  an  account  from  me 
of  my  first  years  in  Paris. 

I'm  afraid  it's  a  long  story  you're  asking  me  to  tell  you. 
So  much  the  better,  he  answered.  We  like  long  stories 
in  France.  I  thought  it  was  just  the  other  way,  I 
answered:  your  novels  are  shorter  than  ours.  It  is  the 
telling  of  a  story  that  decides  its  length,  my  visitor 
replied,  and  raising  myself  up  in  bed  so  that  I  might 
bow  acknowledgment  to  my  visitor's  discreet  compliment 
I  became  aware  of  the  presence  of  a  young  man  of  the 
upper  classes,  one  probably  passing  through  journalism 
on  his  way  to  literature;  and,  my  curiosity  stimulated 
to  examine  him  again,  I  perceived  a  small,  finely  cut  face 
and  kind,  almost  female  eyes,  that  told  me  I  could  count 
upon  him  for  encouragement  during  my  narrative,  which 
I  began  to  fear  would  be  a  long  one,  and  difficult.  But 
he  knows  how  to  listen,  I  said  to  myself,  and  that  is  a 
great  help,  for  the  better  half  of  a  story  is  supplied  by 
the  intelligent  listener  or  listeners. 

I  am  tempted  to  tell  the  story  you  are  good  enough  to 
ask  me  to  tell,  for  if  I'm  not  mistaken  it  is  of  sufficient 


268  AVOWALS 

general  interest,  though  the  events  in  it  are  particular  to 
myself;  what  I  mean  is  this,  that  it  is  full  of  hints  of  a 
guiding  Providence,  and  I  take  it  for  truth  that  no  one, 
however  exempt  he  may  be  from  belief  in  revealed 
religion,  ever  escapes  from  the  hope,  the  suspicion,  that 
his  life  is  not  altogether  at  random;  and  if  there  is  a 
Providence  anywhere  there  is  one  everywhere,  a  law 
over  small  things  as  well  as  great.  You  will  pardon  this 
little  exordium  of  Providence,  my  story  being  unable  to 
stand  without  it.  My  visitor  acquiesced,  and  I  said:  I 
will  continue  a  little  further,  saying  that  everybody,  when 
he  looks  back,  discovers  some  decisive  moment  from  which 
his  life  expanded  or  narrowed.  You  ask  me  to  tell  how  I 
came  to  cut  a  figure  in  Parisian  society  in  the  seventies; 
if  I  leave  Providence  out  of  my  narrative  I  shall  be  looked 
upon  as  egotistical,  and  if  I  observe  the  hand  of  Providence 
too  frequently,  I  shall  be  considered  a  fatalist.  Is  not 
this  so?  As  yourself  has  said,  my  visitor  answered,  Provi- 
dence is  everywhere  or  nowhere,  and  I  agree  with  you 
that  a  partial  Providence,  one  that  intervenes  occasionally 
when  the  racket  and  disorder  become  intolerable  and 
retires  again  into  the  clouds,  leaving  men  and  women  to 
their  own  devices,  is  ridiculous.  Yet  that  is  the  sort  of 
Providence  that  humanity  accepts  more  easily  than  a 
complete  guidance  or  a  complete  absence  of  guidance. 
Alas,  I  said,  human  life  is  essentially  illogical;  only  art 
is  reasonable.  And  art  itself  must  not  be  too  logical, 
my  visitor  interjected,  setting  me  thinking  that  I  must 
be  careful  with  my  story  for  my  listener  was  certainly  an 
intelligent  young  man. 

The  decisive  moment  in  my  life,  I  began,  was  when 
Jim  Brown,  a  cousin,  a  painter  of  no  fame  whatsoever,  nor 
of  talent  properly  considered,  but  gifted  with  the  faculty 
of  distributing  ideas  over  large  canvases,  Dore  fashion, 
faced  round,  palette  in  hand,  and  with  his  back  to  a 
picture  of  Julius  Csesar  overturning  a  Druid  altar,  said: 


AVOWALS 

if  you  want  to  learn  painting  you  must  go  to  Paris!  The 
word  Paris  seemed  to  flame  up  in  my  mind,  and  my  life, 
till  that  moment  objectless,  acquired  direction;  but  I  had 
to  wait  till  I  came  of  age,  and  as  soon  as  twenty-one  had 
struck,  I  went  away,  as  is  related  in  The  Confessions  of  a 
Young  Man,  to  live  in  Paris  in  the  Hotel  Voltaire,  directed 
thither  by  another  painter.  The  Hdtel  Voltaire  was 
chosen  because  it  was  near  to  the  Beaux  Arts.  Some  of 
the  story  I  am  telling  here  is  included  in  The  Confessions 
of  a  Young  Man,  but  the  present  telling  is  more  providen- 
tial than  the  first.  I  did  some  drawing  in  Cabanel's  studio, 
but  left  it  after  a  few  weeks.  And  if  you  hadn't,  nothing 
that  chanced  would  have  chanced,  my  visitor  interjected. 
Nothing,  I  answered.  You  will  see  in  a  moment  how 
necessary  it  was  that  I  should  be  taken  out  of  the  H6tel 
Voltaire  and  removed  to  the  Hotel  de  Russie,  Boulevard 
des  Italiens,  whither  my  destiny  awaited  me.  But  the 
ways  of  Providence  are  round  about,  and  the  rough  life 
at  the  Beaux  Arts  put  it  into  my  head  that  I  should  do 
well  to  seek  out  some  great  painter  and  try  to  persuade 
him  to  take  me  as  a  private  pupil.  I  had  seen  a  photo- 
graph of  Sevre's  Bacchante,  and  I  called  on  him,  but  like 
Cabanel  he  did  not  take  private  pupils,  and  my  hope  then 
centred  on  Jules  Lefebvre;  but  he  no  more  than  Cabanel 
nor  Sevre  could  receive  a  pupil  in  his  studio.  There  is 
a  public  studio,  he  said,  in  the  Passage  des  Panoramas  and 
I  correct  the  drawings  two  days  a  week.  As  this  sounded 
plausible  I  bade  him  good-bye  and  went  in  search  of  the 
Passage  des  Panoramas,  and  finding  its  studio  to  be  less 
rowdy  than  the  Beaux  Arts  I  was  easily  persuaded  by  the 
artful  southerner,  Julien,  to  join  it. 

His  classes  began  at  eight  in  the  morning,  and,  the 
Passage  des  Panoramas  being  half-an-hour's  walk  from  the 
quay  Voltaire,  a  change  of  lodging  seemed  necessary. 
My  banker,  John  Arthur,  recommended  me  to  the  Hdtel 
de  Russie  at  the  corner  of  the  Rue  Drouout  and  the 


270  AVOWALS 

Boulevard,  an  old-fashioned  place  that  had  just  come 
into  the  possession  of  an  enterprising  Belgian  who  had 
taken  it  over  from  the  late  proprietor,  together  with  a 
curious  little  collection  of  permanent  and  occasional 
customers.  The  Belgian  led  me  up  seemingly  unending 
stairs  and  pressed  two  rooms  at  the  end  of  a  passage 
upon  me,  saying  that  I  should  be  tout  a  fait  chez  moi,  and 
that  my  valet  could  have  a  room  on  the  floor  above  for 
two  francs  and  a  half  a  day  (in  those  days,  as  you  see, 
one  lived  cheaply);  he  conducted  me  downstairs  to  a 
dining-room  in  sombre  wall-paper  and  des  buffets  envieux 
chene,  sculptt  en  Belgique,  and  brought  hither  possibly  by 
Monsieur  Riguel,  unless,  indeed,  the  ex-proprietor  was 
a  Belgian  and  left  his  mobilier  to  his  successor.  That 
dining-room  has  been  transformed,  long  since  brought 
up  to  date  (into  what  region  of  conjecture  am  I  not 
adventuring,  not  having  seen  it  for  forty  years),  yet  I 
will  aver  that  it  has  been  transformed  out  of  all  resem- 
blance to  its  original  self,  and  is  now  a  miracle  of  white 
paint  and  gilding.  It  may  even  have  fallen  out  that  a 
corner  has  been  found  for  a  few  musicians,  but  in  '73 
it  was  en  famille.  Les  buffets  in  carved  oak  have  been 
mentioned,  but  not  the  five  and  twenty  chairs  to  match, 
nor  the  three  windows  overlooking  the  Boulevard,  nor  the 
waiters,  two,  or  were  there  three,  who  took  their  orders 
from  Monsieur  Riguel,  an  eagle-faced  man  whose  immense 
moustache  and  imperial  are  still  fixed  in  my  memory.  He 
placed  me  par  complaisance  next  to  Uncle  Sam,  and  what  a 
veritable  Uncle  Sam  he  was,  his  tall  skull  and  aquiline 
nose  and  mottled  complexion  carrying  my  thoughts  back 
to  the  tomahawks  and  plumes  of  Wyoming.  By  him  and 
opposite  me  sat  an  elderly  Italian  Countess,  who  after 
dinner  accepted  a  large  cigar  from  Uncle  Sam:  Uncle 
Sam  extended  his  cigar-case  to  me  and  we  all  smoked 
together,  Uncle  Sam  jerking  out  his  words,  telling  me, 
with  an  air  of  authority  and  pride,  that  he  had  sat  at  the 


AVOWALS  271 

head  of  the  table  for  more  than  thirty  years,  whereas 
the  Countess  was  only  an  occasional  visitor,  on  the  same 
plane,  or  very  nearly,  as  the  French  officer,  who  sat  next 
to  her.  He  drew  my  attention  to  the  French  officer 
and  spoke  of  him  in  terms  of  great  respect.  Monsieur 
le  Capitaine  always  brought  his  wife  with  him,  and  I  saw 
a  woman  about  forty  who  once  had  been  pretty,  but  had 
fallen  into  flesh,  and  was  now  lumpy  behind  and  in  front. 
She  spoke  but  little,  deeming  it  sufficient  to  giggle  at  her 
husband's  sallies;  the  boute-en-train  of  the  table  d'hote  was 
Monsieur  le  Capitaine,  a  short,  thick-set  man  whose  face 
a  great  black  beard  almost  covered;  his  eyes,  almost  as 
black  as  his  beard,  twinkled  at  his  jokes,  which  were  much 
relished  by  Uncle  Sam.  Two  Spaniards  loom  up  dimly 
in  my  memory,  elderly  gentlemen  of  quiet  demeanour, 
who  spoke  English,  and  who,  for  that  reason,  were  often 
placed  next  to  me.  I  think  that  one  used  to  tell  improper 
stories  in  a  faint  voice;  the  other  is  remembered  by  reason 
of  his  having  said  that  after  seventy  it  is  seldom  that  a 
day  passes  without  bringing  a  thought  of  death  to  one's 
mind,  to  which  I  made  the  consoling  answer  that  it  is 
not  necessary  to  reach  the  age  of  seventy-three  to  think 
of  death,  for  as  soon  as  we  pass  to  the  age  of  reason  we 
think  of  death  daily. 

So  that  was  the  spring-board,  my  visitor  said,  from 
which  you  jumped  into  Parisian  society  and  became  a 
somebody  in  it?  It  was,  indeed,  I  answered,  and  you 
will  see  in  a  moment  how  it  came  about. 

As  I  was  about  to  tell  of  a  certain  providential  link 
in  a  chain  in  which  every  link  was  providential,  the 
waiter  entered  with  a  cup  of  chocolate  and  a  croissant, 
and  it  seeming  to  me  a  great  injustice  to  chocolate  to 
allow  it  to  get  cold,  I  asked  my  visitor  if  it  were  permitted 
to  me  to  breakfast,  saying  that  to  keep  myself  from 
supping  chocolate  as  soon  as  it  comes  within  my  reach  was 
beyond  my  powers  of  restraint.     My  visitor  begged  me 


Wt%  AVOWALS 

to  begin  breakfast,  saying  pleasantly  that  while  I  supped 
and  scrunched  he  would  scribble  his  notes. 

You  are  curious  to  hear  how  the  H6tel  de  Russie  led 
to  Victor  Hugo,  to  Banville,  to  Zola,  to  the  Goncourts, 
to  Daudet,  to  Manet,  to  Degas,  to  Pissarro,  to  Renoir,  to 
Halevy,  to  Meilhac,  to  Coppee,  to  Maupassant,  to  Catulle 
Mendes,  to  Alexis,  to  Ceard,  to — it  is  impossible  to 
supply  at  once  a  complete  list  of  all  the  men  who  were 
great  in  the  seventies.  Renan?  No;  I  never  met  him. 
To  the  H6tel  de  Russie  Bernard  Lopez  came  every 
Monday  to  dinner,  a  short,  fat  man  with  a  large  bald 
head,  and  only  a  rim  of  hair  left  about  it,  his  chin  de- 
scending step  by  step  into  a  voluminous  bosom,  a  sort 
of  human  guinea-pig.  I  cannot  help  saying  it,  for  though 
the  comparison  is  not  polite,  it  will  bring  my  old  friend 
before  you.  He  talked  in  a  high  falsetto  voice,  extend- 
ing a  podgy  hand  to  me,  for  M.  Riguel  was  kind  enough 
to  introduce  us,  whispering  to  me,  in  a  husky  voice: 
A  great  dramatic  writer.  At  the  words — great  dramatic 
writer- — I  dropped  into  the  chair  beside  him,  not  a  little 
fluttered,  and  set  myself  to  the  task  of  persuading  him 
to  tell  me  about  the  plays  he  had  written — not  an  easy 
task,  for  Bernard  Lopez's  conversation  was  somewhat 
trite  and  insipid.  All  the  same  he  had  written  eighty 
or  ninety  plays,  and  had  been  acted  in  all  the  principal 
theatres:  the  exact  number  of  plays,  I  have  forgotten, 
but  it  was  not  far  from  a  hundred,  and  the  soup  had 
not  gone  away  before  a  project  began  to  form  in  my 
mind — to  go  to  one  of  the  theatres  performing  a  play 
by  him  after  dinner.  But  on  questioning  him  as  to 
which  theatre  he  would  like  me  to  visit,  he  told  me 
that  no  play  of  his  was  being  performed  at  present, 
which  did  not  matter  much,  for  it  was  more  interesting 
to  hear  of  the  great  writers  with  whom  he  had  written 
the  eighty  or  ninety  plays  than  to  see  any  one  play; 
and  the  names  he  mentioned  inspired  a  respect,  an  awe 


AVOWALS  273 

that  could  not  have  been  increased.  He  had  written 
plays  with  Dumas,  Scribe,  Saint  Georges,  Gautier,  Ban- 
ville;  and  to  have  written  with  so  many  different  men 
did  not  depreciate  him  in  my  eyes,  but  raised  him, 
and  I  thought  of  the  appointments :  a  great  man  arriving 
at  his  house,  or  Lopez  going  to  a  great  man's  house, 
and  the  dramatic  twain  sitting  opposite  each  other  to 
settle  what  was  to  be  done  with  the  third  act.  His 
collaborations  helped  to  transport  him  in  my  imagination 
among  the  slopes  of  Parnassus,  and  on  hearing  that  he 
had  written  a  play  in  verse,  I  saw  him  sitting  there, 
lyre  in  hand:  but,  such  is  the  way  of  all  youthful  vision, 
he  seems  to  me  now  like  a  character  fallen  out  of  the 
Human  Comedy — an  old  dramatic  writer,  long  gone  out 
of  fashion,  living  upon  some  small  income,  but  wearing 
all  the  same  a  well-brushed  frock  coat  and  immaculate 
linen.  A  bachelor,  of  course,  and  it  was  not  till  some 
months  later  that  I  learned  he  had  been  married  to  a 
woman  with  money,  and  that  he  dined  every  day  at  a 
different  restaurant  or  hotel,  not  because  ke  liked  one 
better  than  another,  but  from  habit. 

And  seeing  that  I  liked  talking  to  Monsieur  Lopez, 
Monsieur  Biguel  arranged  that  I  should  sit  next  him 
always;  and  every  succeeding  Monday  I  learned  a  little 
more  of  dramatic  writing  and  how  it  was  practiced  in 
Paris  in  the  forties,  fifties  and  sixties.  At  the  end  of 
the  month  I  dared  to  invite  him  to  accompany  me  to  a 
cafe,  and  to  all6w  me  to  offer  him  cups  of  coffee,  glasses 
of  Chartreuse.  And  cigars,  my  visitor  interjected.  No; 
Bernard  Lopez  did  not  smoke.  And  very  soon,  within  a 
few  months,  Monsieur  Lopez's  companionship  inspired  me 
to  write  two  plays,  of  which,  I  am  glad  to  say,  no  trace 
remains,  but  his  criticism  of  these  early  efforts  were  of 
permanent  help  to  me;  there  can  be  no  doubt  of  that. 
It  was  in  his  company  that  I  purchased  my  first  copy  of 
Les  Fleurs  du  Mai,  and  out  of  these  poems  and  others  he 


274  AVOWALS 

advised  me  to  read  arose,  within  a  year,  a  small  volume 
entitled  Flowers  of  Passion.  The  book  appeared  in  black, 
with  a  death's  head,  cross-bones  and  a  lyre  stamped  in  gold 
upon  it;  and  it  set  people  writing  and  talking;  and 
Edmund  Yates,  seeing  in  the  book  an  opportunity  for  a 
striking  article,  wrote  three  quarters  of  a  column  under 
the  title  of  A  Bestial  Bard,  beginning  his  criticism  thus: 
This  book  should  be  burned  by  the  common  hangman 
while  the  author  is  being  whipped  at  the  cart's  tail.  In 
those  days  The  World  was  a  great  paper,  and  before  long 
all  kinds  of  imitations  of  Yates's  article  began  to  appear 
in  the  Press,  and  these  Mr.  Provost,  the  publisher  of  the 
book,  used  to  send  me.  One  night  I  laid  them  before 
Bernard  Lopez,  who,  though  accustomed  to  violent  articles, 
was  astonished  at  the  violence  of  these.  They  seem  to 
have  exhausted,  he  said,  the  vocabulary  of  abuse,  and 
from  our  corner  in  the  Cafe  Madrid  he  began  to  spy  a 
possible  callaborator  in  me.  We  ought  to  write  a  play  to- 
gether, he  said.  The  honour  so  suddenly  and  unex- 
pectedly thrust  upon  me  seemed  too  great.  I  was  taken 
aback  and  thought  of  myself  as  a  humble  follower  of 
Banville,  Gautier  and  Gerard  de  Nerval.  But  what 
shall  we  write?  I  asked.  What  is  to  be  the  subject? 
Bernard  Lopez  answered  at  once:  we  might  write  a  play 
about  Luther;  and  I  cried:  how  splendid  of  you  to  think 
of  Luther!  Oh  yes,  to  write  a  play  about  Luther,  and 
thinking  of  Luther  I  remembered  him  as  a  German  monk 
who  once  shook  the  Papacy  almost  to  its  downfall. 
But  that  was  enough.  That  he  was  a  German  and 
hated  the  Papacy  was  all  I  knew,  but  that  was  sufficient. 
How  shall  we  write  it?  I  asked  doubtfully  for  at  that 
time  I  was  altogether  without  education.  My  spelling 
and  grammar  were  as  unconventional  as  a  kitchenmaid's; 
of  punctuation  I  had  no  faintest  idea,  and  felt  myself 
obliged  to  confide  the  fact  to  Lopez.  It  staggered  him  to 
hear  that  his  collaborator  could  not  tell  the  difference 


AVOWALS  275 

between  a  comma  and  a  semicolon,  but  on  being  assured 
that  I  would  employ  somebody  to  change  some  of  my 
commas  to  semicolons  he  decided  to  continue  with  me, 
encouraged,  no  doubt,  by  a  certain  copiousness  of  vocabu- 
lary ;  words  I  had  in  plenty,  and  for  the  next  three  months 
Lopez  and  I  talked  Luther  in  many  various  cafes,  and 
every  day  I  composed  fifty,  sixty,  seventy,  sometimes  as 
many  as  a  hundred  blank  verse  lines.  If  it  were  Monday  I 
went  to  meet  him  at  the  H6tel  de  Russie,  and  if  I  had 
anything  special  on  my  mind  I  went  to  the  Place  Pigalle 
to  take  him  out  to  dinner.  We  often  dined  at  the  Boule 
Noire,  for  the  Hotel  de  Russie  had  begun  to  seem  old- 
fashioned  to  me  now  that  I  had  come  to  live  in  Mont- 
martre,  in  the  Rue  de  la  Tour  des  Dames,  not  far  from 
the  Place  Pigalle,  where  Lopez  lived — his  house  was  in  the 
block  next  to  the  Nouvelle  Athenes.  One  evening  our 
seance  de  collaboration  had  been  unduly  prolonged  in  some 
distant  cafe,  or  maybe  we  had  gone  to  see  some  play 
together,  and  it  was  nearly  midnight  before  we  reached 
the  Place  Pigalle,  and  there  it  occurred  to  Lopez  or  to 
me  that  it  would  be  well  to  eat  a  soupe  a  Voignon  before 
parting. 

Le  Rat  Mort,  the  cafe  by  the  side  of  the  Nouvelle 
Athenes,  was  celebrated  at  that  time  {dans  le  quartier) 
for  its  soupe  a  Voignon,  so  we  turned  into  it,  and  had 
hardly  crossed  the  threshold  when  Lopez  ran  forward  in 
his  little  tottering  walk  to  extend  his  podgy  little  hand 
to  a  man  who  sat  writing,  a  book  beside  him,  and  I  cursed 
my  luck,  foreseeing  that  this  acquaintance  would  divert 
the  conversation  from  Luther,  and  I  should  not  learn  that 
evening  certain  facts  regarding  the  peasant  wars.  So  in 
a  mood  of  resentment  I  allowed  Bernard  Lopez  to  enter- 
tain his  acquaintance,  pretending  an  interest  in  a  woman 
who  sat  drinking  beer  opposite  to  us  on  the  other  side  of 
the  cafe  till  a  man  came  and  sat  by  her.  As  I  could  not 
legitimately  pretend  any  further  interest  in  her,  my  eyes 


276  AVOWALS 

were  diverted  to  a  somewhat  hostile  observation  of 
Bernard  Lopez's  acquaintance,  whose  round  head,  prom- 
inent eyes,  and  white  restless  hand  always  trying  to 
settle  his  shirt  collar,  a  thing  that  was  impossible  to  do, 
for  the  buttonhole  would  not  hold  the  button  any  longer, 
annoyed  me.  Nor  did  the  fact  that  the  man  bore  a  title, 
Monsieur  le  Comte  Villiers  de  Tile  Adam,  attract  me  to- 
wards him,  nor  did  Villiers  win  me  easily,  for  his  disjointed 
conversation  irritated  me  as  much  as  his  appearance,  and 
my  dislike  was  at  the  point  of  turning  to  hatred  when  he 
began  to  quote  Paradise  Lost,  a  poem  unknown  to  me  at 
that  time,  but  the  mood  of  confession  not  being  upon 
me  at  the  moment  I  chose  to  hide  my  ignorance  of  the 
poem  from  Bernard  Lopez  and  Villiers  by  pleading  that 
Villiers'  pronunciation  of  English  had  thrown  me  off  my 
guard. 

You  must  know  Mallarme,  said  Villiers.  He  receives  on 
Tuesday  evening  in  the  Rue  de  Rome.  But  who  is 
Mallarme?  I  asked,  and  on  learning  that  he  was  a  man  of 
letters  and  a  poet  my  mood  became  gentler  and  I  professed 
willingness  to  make  his  acquaintance.  Garqon,  donnez  moi 
de  quoi  Scrire,  cried  Villiers,  and  I  watched  him  writing 
some  six  or  seven  lines  on  the  thin  paper  habitual  in  cafes, 
almost  cigarette  paper,  little  thinking  that  these  six  or 
seven  lines  were  charged  with  my  life's  destiny. 

Whatsoever  Mallarme's  talent  might  be  he  was  a  poet, 
and  to  seek  him  out  on  Tuesday  would  be  a  pleasant 
employment  in  the  forthcoming  week.  The  Place  de 
L'Europe  end  of  the  Rue  de  Rome  contains  fine  houses, 
but  on  the  other  side  of  the  Boulevard  Exterieur  it  drifts 
into  a  slum,  and  the  house  Mallarme  lived  in  did  not 
inspire  great  hopes,  for  we  are  all  subject  to  be  impressed 
by  appearance;  a  dingy  staircase  wound  up  in  a  narrow 
spiral  past  the  third  floor;  on  the  fourth  a  door  was 
opened  by  a  short,  thick-set  man  of  middle  age,  whose 
appearance  recalled  a  French  workman,  and  whose  voice 


AVOWALS  277 

rang  with  welcome  on  hearing  that  I  came  recommended 
by  Villiers,  and  besought  me  to  enter.  We  came  to  a 
small  salle  a  manger,  with  a  white  porcelain  stove  at  one 
end,  a  window  at  the  other,  a  table  and  several  chairs 
ranged  along  the  walls.  Now  you,  he  said  to  me,  who  are 
accustomed  to  the  sea,  may  well  take  the  rocking-chair. 

I  have  brought  you  my  volume  of  verses,  Monsieur 
Mallarme,  Flowers  of  Passion.  How  kind  of  you,  he 
answered,  taking  the  book  from  me  and  giving  it  his  com- 
plete attention;  he  became  absorbed,  and  thereby  en- 
couraged I  ventured  to  draw  his  attention  to  some  verses 
which  seemed  to  me  to  deserve  his  consideration  more 
than  the  others;  and  at  once  his  face  assumed  a  grave 
expression,  and  dropping  into  a  chair  beside  a  paraffin 
lamp,  he  seemed  to  be  reading,  and  again  the  idea  of  a 
very  handsome  French  peasant  rose  up  in  my  mind,  and  I 
remembered  that  when  he  opened  the  door  to  me  he  re- 
called a  house  painter,  but  now  as  he  stood  reading  my 
book  under  the  paraffin  lamp  I  began  to  feel  that  if  he 
were  a  house  painter  and  wore  a  smock  he  would  have 
introduced  into  the  smock  some  touch  to  distinguish  it 
from  all  others;  his  clothes  were  not  without  a  certain 
nattiness,  and  though  the  room  was  poor  there  were  some 
interesting  drawings  on  the  walls.  I  caught  sight  of  a 
piece  of  furniture  in  a  corner  that  could  not  be  else  than 
genuine  Louis  XV.  And  once  more  his  gentle  and 
winning  manner  drew  me  to  him. 

An  hour  later  his  wife  and  daughter  brought  us  two 
glasses  of  rum  punch  with  lemon  peel  in  them.  After 
this  act  of  hospitality,  Madame  and  Mademoiselle  with- 
drew, leaving  the  master  to  continue  the  lesson  that  he  never 
ceased  to  unfold  to  all  and  sundry  long  after  the  departure 
of  his  first  pupil,  from  Tuesday  to  Tuesday,  to  an  ever- 
increasing  number,  till  the  little  salle  a  manger  became  the 
centre  of  Parisian  culture.  It  was  a  great  surprise,  on  my 
return  thither  after  many  years  of  absence,  to  find  that  the 


278  AVOWALS 

flight  of  the  years  obliged  somebody  to  surrender  his  chair 
to  me;  all  were  occupied;  the  late-comers  sat  on  the  floor, 
nowise  embarrassed,  glad  to  listen  to  the  poet,  who  still 
stood  in  front  of  the  porcelain  stove  roasting  his  calves. 
Of  a  sudden  the  great  Heredia  burst  into  the  quiet 
assembly;  his  entry  seemed  like  a  West  Indian  tornado; 
and  Mallarme's  welcome  to  his  old  and  unexpected  guest 
was  hearty,  and  we  listened  to  Heredia,  who  related  with 
great  gusto  the  literary  jocosities  of  the  Comte  de 
Montesquiou,  stories  that  I  should  regale  you  with,  my 
dear  sir,  had  I  not  remembered  that  you  came  here  in 
quest  of  another  story;  so  I  will  leave  the  conquistador 
narrating  to  a  numerous  and  appreciative  company  and  re- 
turn to  the  time  when  I  resented  a  visitor,  almost  unable 
to  forgive  the  intruder,  though  he  stayed  but  a  little  while. 
The  evening  is  very  clear  in  my  mind  when,  struck  by  my 
constancy,  he  said :  you  are  very  faithful  to  my  Tuesdays, 
and  have  earned  a  copy  of  L'apres-midi  d'un  Faune. 
Whereupon  he  retired  to  his  library  (there  were  no  books 
in  the  salle  a  manger;  I  never  penetrated  farther  into  his 
apartments)  and  returned  with  a  thin  leaflet  printed  on 
Japanese  paper,  illustrated  by  Manet,  and  adorned  with 
tasselled  ribbons — a  leaflet  published  at  one  hundred 
francs,  now  worth  many  hundreds  of  francs. 

I  accepted  the  treasure  with  all  the  reverence  I  could 
assume;  but  in  the  years  I  am  relating  I  was  more  in- 
terested in  the  play  he  was  dreaming  than  in  his  poems. 
A  wonderful  play  it  was  in  truth,  consisting  of  a  single 
character:  a  young  man,  the  last  of  a  race,  who  lived 
in  an  old  castle  in  which  the  wind  howled,  inciting  the 
young  man  to  go  forth  and  rebuild  the  fortunes  of  his 
family.  But  the  young  man  is  uncertain  whether  the 
wind  bids  him  stay  or  go  forth,  for,  as  Mallarme  put  it: 
It  is  in  the  genius  of  the  French  language  that  the  wind 
is  always  trying  to  say  oui:  ou-ou,  the  wind  says  again 
and  again,  almost  getting  out  the  word  oui,  but  never 


AVOWALS  279 

quite  reaching  the  last  vowel.  So  the  young  man  is  left  in 
doubt  whether  he  should  go  forth  or  stay.  Mallarme  gave 
imitations  of  the  wind,  and  when  he  finished  I  asked  him 
what  steps  he  was  going  to  take  to  have  the  play  per- 
formed, and  he  answered,  unwillingly,  as  it  appeared  to 
me,  saying  he  would  like  to  hire  a  caravan  and  act  the 
play  himself,  wandering  from  village  to  village.  For 
years  he  dreamed  this  play,  and  when  he  was  not  dream- 
ing it  he  bethought  himself  of  an  epic  that  was  to  fulfil 
his  literary  aspirations.  And  the  subject  was  even  more 
fantastic  than  Hamlet  and  the  wind.  A  man  loves  a 
woman  and  is  about  to  marry  her,  but  the  seed  that  is  in 
this  man  (the  potential  child),  overwhelmed  by  the  idea 
that  his  potential  mother  should  cease  to  be  a  virgin, 
endeavours  to  dissuade  his  potential  father.  Again  the 
Hamlet  idea:  To  be  or  not  to  be,  expressed  in  circum- 
stance or  lack  of  circumstance,  never  before  meditated,  we 
may  say,  never  certain  that  none  will  set  up  a  prior  claim. 
An  epic,  he  considered  this  one  to  be,  and  of  all,  one  in 
which  many  subtle  things  could  be  said.  But  not  a  long 
epic,  he  was  quick  to  remark,  for  like  Poe  he  did  not 
favour  long  poems;  one  of  about  a  thousand  lines,  not 
more.  The  epic  did  not,  however,  possess  him  as  com- 
pletely as  the  tragedy  of  the  boy  and  the  wind.  He  be- 
lieved in  his  Hamlet,  I  am  sure,  but  I  do  not  think  a  single 
line  of  it  ever  found  its  way  into  those  mysterious  little 
notebooks  made  of  Japanese  paper  to  which  he  said  he 
used  to  confide  the  subjects  of  all  his  meditations;  he 
liked  to  show  these  notebooks  to  me,  and  once  he  turned 
the  tiny  leaves  over,  apparently  for  my  inspection,  but 
as  I  put  out  my  hand  to  take  it  he  returned  his  notebooks 
to  their  drawer,  saying:  Hugo  must  have  known  that  in 
writing  Hernani  and  Le  Roi  s' amuse  he  was  only  continu- 
ing Shakespeare.  He  is  thinking,  I  said  to  myself,  of  the 
young  man  in  the  feudal  tower  listening  to  the  wind. 
I  am  afraid  that  the  pleasure  of  telling  you  about 


280  AVOWALS 

Mallarme  and  the  olden  days  has  drawn  me  away  from 
the  story  that  you  came  to  hear,  but  not  as  much  as  it 
would  seem  at  first  sight,  for,  as  has  often  been  said,  no 
link  in  the  chain  is  more  important  than  another,  and  as 
the  Hdtel  de  Russe  led  me  to  Lopez,  as  Lopez  led  me  to 
Villiers,  as  Villiers  led  me  to  Mallarme,  Mallarme  sent 
me  to  Manet,  and  the  great  turning-point  in  my  life 
came  about  one  night  while  we  were  talking  about  L'apres- 
midi  d'un  Faune,  on  my  remarking  that  Manet's  drawings 
were  the  only  modern  drawings  that  had  any  character 
of  their  own;  and  Mallarme,  taking  my  phrase  to  heart, 
repeated  it  to  Manet;  and  thinking  that  my  golden  hair 
and  pink  and  white  complexion  were  especially  suitable 
to  Manet's  art,  he  said  to  me:  you  can  see  Manet  any 
night  you  like  at  the  Nouvelle  Athenes;  I  have  spoken 
about  you  to  him.  If  Providence  ever  extended  her  hand 
to  me  it  was  the  evening  I  turned  into  the  Nouvelle 
Athenes  with  a  great  sheaf  of  proofs.  Manet  did  not  keep 
me  long  waiting;  he  came  in  some  half-an-hour  later, 
and  recognising  me  from  Mallarme's  description,  he  said, 
taking  advantage  of  a  favourable  opportunity,  his  con- 
versation with  Degas  beginning  to  languish :  does  not  our 
conversation  interrupt  you  in  the  correction  of  your 
proofs?  Not  in  the  least,  I  answered,  and  entered  into 
conversation  with  him.  But  Degas  called  to  him  and  he 
said:  Come  to  my  studio  to-morrow;  any  time  after  four 
o'clock,  73,  Rue  Amsterdam,  and  I  walked  like  one  en- 
chanted, daring  to  hope  we  might  become  friends;  and 
all  night  long  I  looked  forward  to  that  studio  as  a  young 
man  in  England  looks  forward  to  a  university,  without 
being,  of  course,  aware  that  the  Cafe  of  the  Nouvelle 
Athenes  was  the  moot-house  of  two  great  literary  and 
artistic  movements — a  university  in  fact,  and  superior  to 
a  university  inasmuch  as  it  was  a  natural  centre  of  cul- 
ture; a  university  is  an  artificial  centre,  a  last  shift,  but 
the  moot-house  of  an  artistic  period  is  the  best  luck  that 


AVOWALS  281 

can  befall  an  aspirant  to  the  arts;  it  was  my  luck  for 
several  years  to  be  taken  in  hand  by  men  of  genius  and 
literally  pulled  along,  all  working  together,  each  con- 
tributing something. 

But  why  this  unique  advantage  of  development  should 
have  fallen  to  my  lot  has  been  a  matter  of  wonder  to  me 
all  my  life,  for  there  was  nothing  in  my  verses  nor  in  my 
drawings  to  entreat  Manet's  consideration,  and  I  dare  not 
allow  my  memory  to  recall  the  crude  opinions  I  used  to 
pick  up  and  express  in  those  years.     How  it  was  that 

Manet  bore  with  me But  a  word  about  Manet  from 

me  will  interest  your  readers,  and  it  is  worth  telling  that 
years  after,  sitting  at  dinner  with  Monet,  in  the  Cafe 
Royal,  Monet,  speaking  out  of  a  long  silence,  said:  How 
like  Manet  was  to  his  painting;  and  I  answered:  Yes. 
Whereupon  we  fell  to  thinking  of  that  fine,  fearless, 
audacious  face;  of  those  pale,  daring  eyes;  of  that  won- 
derful innocency  of  vision.  If  ever  eyes  spoke  his  did 
and  what  they  said  was,  that  there  is  but  one  shame — to 
be  ashamed.  And  now  I  will  tell  you  a  story  that  I  have 
never  told  to  anybody  before,  for  it  will  help  you  to 
understand  Manet  better  than  fifty  pages  of  description 
by  me  or  by  any  other,  though  the  other  be  the  greatest 
descriptive  writer  that  ever  lived.  One  afternoon  he 
said  to  me  as  we  left  the  studio:  Last  night  as  I  was  going 
to  the  Nouvelle  Athenes  I  met  two  little  girls  who  invited 
me  up  to  their  room,  but  no  sooner  were  we  there  than 
they  began  to  tell  me  sad  stories  about  themselves,  and  as 
I  didn't  go  there  to  listen  to  sad  stories  I  gave  them  five 
francs  each  and  went  on  to  the  Nouvelle  Athenes.  The 
only  thing  to  do,  wasn't  it? 

The  importance  of  this  anecdote  seems  to  me  very  great 
if  we  would  undertand  the  paintings,  for  it  was  the 
natural  spontaneous  frankness  of  his  mind  that  prompted 
them.  To  be  ashamed  of  nothing  but  to  be  ashamed  was 
his  motto,  his  emblem,  his  device.     And  now  that  you 


282  AVOWALS 

know  him  you  will  appreciate  the  advantages  of  association 
with  a  great  original  mind  to  a  youngster  in  the  early 
twenties,  when  the  mind  is  most  susceptible  to  influences. 
The  choicest  women  of  Paris  used  to  come  to  Manet's 
studio,  and  among  these  flowers  of  womanhood  the  fairest 
was  Mary  Laurent,  the  mistress  of  Evans,  the  American 
dentist,  he  who  contrived  the  escape  of  the  Empress 
Eugenie  to  England,  the  delightful  caprice  in  turn  of 
all  the  great  men  of  letters  in  old-time  Paris — of  Adrian 
Marx,  of  Becque,  of  Coppee,  of  Manet.  The  wittiest 
among  women!  How  much  of  her  wit  was  original  and 
how  much  derived  from  the  great  minds  with  which  she 
associated  I  have  often  aked  myself,  remembering  always 
that  it  was  not  her  lovers  that  prompted  the  graceful 
answer  ready  on  her  tongue  when  I  asked  her  why  she 
did  not  leave  the  doctor  as  soon  as  the  deed  of  gift  of  two 
thousand  a  year  was  signed.  Why  should  I,  she  replied, 
descend  to  a  meanness  when  I  could  find  content  and  per- 
haps happiness  in  being  unfaithful  in  him?  Her  beauty 
was  the  tea-rose  sort,  and  it  appears  again  and  again  in 
Manet's  work  in  pastel  and  oil.  I  am  not  sure  that  he 
ever  tried  a  water-colour.  One  night But  the  anec- 
dote that  returns  to  me,  Le  Docteur  et  ses  Cornets,  has  been 
told  already  in  Memoirs  of  my  Dead  Life,  and  the  sudden 
introduction  of  Mary's  name  into  this  narrative  can  only 
be  justified  inasmuch  as  it  tells  that  all  the  influences  of 
spiritual  liberation  and  nourishment  of  the  artistic  tem- 
perament were  forthcoming  in  that  studio.  Valtez, 
whose  hair  competed  with  mine,  and  whose  bedroom  Zola 
asked  to  see  before  he  wrote  Nana,  was  a  frequent  visitor, 
and  many  other  names  chime  in  my  memory — every 
man's  memory  is  a  chime  of  fair  women's  names.  But 
though  Manet  was  the  most  potent  influence,  there  were 
many  others.  It  was  in  Manet's  studio  that  I  met  Zola, 
and  it  was  Manet  that  compelled  me  to  go  to  the  Rue 
de  l'Assommoir  at  the  Elysees  Montmartre,  disguised  as 


AVOWALS  283 

a  Parisian  workman.  It  was  there  that  he  introduced  me 
to  Zola  and  how  many  others,  for  those  were  days  of  ac- 
quaintances and  friends,  of  impressions  and  opinions.  It 
was  through  Zola  that  I  became  a  friend  of  the  Goncourts, 
of  Daudet,  Duranty,  Catulle  Mendes,  Coppee,  Heredia. 
To  Victor  Hugo  I  went  one  evening  with  Catulle,  and  the 
buffalo  of  poetry,  as  Heine  called  him,  discoursed  that 
night  on  Voltaire  and  Rousseau,  giving  his  reasons  for  not 
being  able  to  accept  Rousseau's  influence  as  comparable 
to  Voltaire's.  Banville  was  there,  and  just  as  we  were 
about  to  separate  between  eleven  and  twelve  the  great 
poet  said:  No,  I  will  not  have  you  go.  In  honour  of 
Banville  we  are  to  sup  together.  What  gave  rise  to  the 
remark  I  have  forgotten,  but  I  remember  hearing  Banville 
say  that  it  was  absurd  for  anybody  to  be  in  love  after 
seventeen  and  three  months.  After  a  slight  pause  Hugo 
answered :  I'd  like  to  hear,  Banville,  what  argument  you 
would  find  to  support  your  extravagant  proposal,  and 
Banville,  finding  himself  in  the  midst  of  a  company  who 
could  appreciate  his  humour,  spoke  for  twenty  minutes, 
throwing  winged  phrases  into  the  air  that,  rising  with 
rapid  wing-beats,  floated,  wheeled  and  chased  each  other 
like  birds  whose  pastime  is  flying,  while  we,  almost  breath- 
less, watched  their  hazardous  evolutions,  glad  at  last  at 
seeing  them  perch  with  a  flutter  of  wings  on  a  full  stop — 
verb,  noun,  adjective,  adverb,  always  in  the  right  place: 
note  of  interrogation,  note  of  exclamation,  comma,  semi- 
colon, and  every  clause  fitting  perfectly  in  that  improvisa- 
tion on  the  theme  that  it  is  absurd  to  be  in  love  after 
seventeen  and  three  months. 

Wilde's  talks  and  Whistler's  was  well  enough,  but  com- 
pared with  Banville's  their  words  were  almost  wingless. 
I  could  talk  to  you  about  Coppee  and  his  love  of  Mary 
Laurent,  whom  I  used  to  call  Toute  la  lyre,  so  numerous 
were  her  loves  among  artists — a  musician  was  her  last 
adventure;    but  the  story  you  came  to  hear  is  how  an 


284  AVOWALS 

Englishman  came  to  be  very  nearly  transformed  into  a 
Frenchman  in  the  seventies.  Because  I  was  always  wax 
within,  and  the  body  being  subject  to  the  mind  my 
English  appearance  began  to  wane  and  to  shape  itself 
afresh,  as  can  be  seen  in  Manet's  portrait.  But  to  be- 
come French  a  complete  knowledge  of  the  language  was 
necessary,  and  the  question  came — what  language  was 
my  literature  to  be  written  in?  for  neither  my  French 
nor  my  English  has  been  to  school;  about  half-a-column 
without  a  mistake  was  my  biggest  break.  To  turn  from 
billiard  parlance  to  racing,  Moore  was  left  behind  at  the 
post  in  two  languages,  Oscar  Wilde  is  reported  to  have 
said  to  Frank  Harris,  and  he'll  have  to  live  a  long  time 
to  reach  the  point  from  which  we  all  started — a  criticism 
whose  fault  is  that  it  does  not  go  far  enough.  Wilde 
should  have  said:  Nature  allows  the  intelligence  she 
intends  for  a  long  literary  journey  to  lie  latent  and  to 
develop  slowly.  But  why  did  you  not  choose  to  learn 
French,  the  young  gentleman  who  came  to  hear  the  story 
of  my  life  in  Paris  asked.  Your  friends  were  here  and 
your  language  was  here  as  much  as  it  was  over  yonder. 
Why  did  you  leave  us?  Am  I  to  understand  that  Provi- 
dence again  took  you  by  the  hand? 

The  reason  that  brought  me  back  to  England  was  a 
letter  from  my  agent  telling  me  that  it  was  impossible 
to  collect  rents  owing  to  the  Land  League  and  that  he 
was  not  prepared  to  risk  his  life  by  serving  eviction 
notices,  any  longer;  and  feeling  that  my  life  was  over 
and  done  with  in  Paris,  I  determined  that  the  rupture 
should  be  complete,  and  vowed,  as  the  steamer  left  your 
cliffs,  that  I  would  return  no  more,  but  keep  the  past 
as  a  relic.  The  hand  of  Providence,  said  my  visitor,  is 
visible  in  the  story  you  tell  me,  sir.  But  Providence 
seems  to  have  been  a  wasteful  hussy.  She  should  have 
managed  to  bring  you  back  into  English  literature  without 
stirring  up  a  peasant  war  in  Ireland.     In  a  prose  poem 


AVOWALS  285 

by  Tourgueneff,  I  said,  Providence  is  discovered  in  her 
cave  meditating,  and  her  meditation  is  so  deep  that  her 
interlocutor  thinks  she  is  planning  some  great  amelioration 
of  the  human  lot;  but  she  tells  him  she  is  thinking  how 
she  may  give  greater  power  to  the  leg  muscles  of  the  flea, 
that  he  may  escape  more  easily  from  his  enemies.  The 
balance  of  attack  and  defence  is  broken  and  must  be 
restored.  If  you  do  not  know  Tourgueneff's  prose  poem 
on  this  subject,  you  should  read  it;  you  will  find  it  in 
a  volume  wrongly  called  Senilia.  But  to  continue  the 
story  that  you  have  come  to  hear:  In  the  eighties  my 
concern  was  to  learn  English,  and  as  my  English  im- 
proved my  French  deteriorated,  and  to-day  I  am  not 
certain  that  the  time  will  not  come  when  I  shall  walk 
about  Paris  with  an  interpreter,  having  lost  the  forlorn 
and  ragged  remnant  of  your  language  which  still  wanders 
about  my  mind,  but  if  with  its  final  disappearance  my 
English  should  gain  some  of  the  distinction  and  grace 
that  the  language  is  capable  of,  I  shall  be  compensated 
in  a  measure  for  what  I  have  lost,  and  I  still  encourage 
the  hope  that  if  I  live  till  ninety  and  keep  my  health  and 
intellect  all  the  time  I  shall  be  able  to  write  it  nearly  as 
well  as  I  should  like  to  write  it.  You're  thinking  of 
Hokusai,  my  visitor  interjected,  who  said,  that  if  he  lived 
till  ninety  he  would  be  able  to  draw,  and  if  you  live  to 
that  age,  forgetting  French  and  learning  English,  you  and 
I  might  be  of 'some  use  to  each  other,  for  between  this  and 
then  I  might  acquire  such  a  knowledge  of  English  as 
might  justify  you  in  engaging  me  as  your  interpreter. 

Even  so,  I  replied,  my  life  would  not  be  put  straight, 
for  the  use  of  language  is  not  everything,  and  the  more 
I  think  of  it  the  more  certain  do  I  feel  that  Providence 
did  me  a  great  wrong  when  she  took  me  out  of  this 
country  to  learn  English  instead  of  leaving  me  here  to 
learn  French,  for  the  best  work  is  done  in  conjunction 
rather  than  in  opposition  to  public  opinion.    In  England 


286  AVOWALS 

I  am  an  Ishmael,  almost  a  Cain :  everybody's  hand  against 
me  and  mine  against  everybody.    But  do  you  not  hope 

that  public  opinion  will Will  change,  I  interjected. 

Oh  yes,  my  death  will  do  me  a  great  deal  of  good.  As 
soon  as  the  grave  closes  great  toleration  will  spread  like 
oil  calming  the  troubled  water;  Edmund  Yates'  article: 
This  book  ought  to  be  burnt  by  the  common  hangman, 
while  the  author  is  being  whipped  at  the  cart's  tail,  will 
be  forgotten,  but  not  till  then.  Only  the  other  day  my 
cousin,  a  Carmelite  nun  at  Lourdes,  wrote  to  ask  me  to 
burn  my  books,  and  my  answer  to  her  is  on  the  table; 
read  it  to  me,  for  your  French  accent  will  tell  me  if  any 
flavour  of  the  French  of  Paris  remains  in  my  French  too 
long  exiled  at  Stratford  atte  Bowe. 

Lettre  de  Georges  Moore  a  sa  Cousine  Germaine, 
Carmelite  depuis  23  ans. 

Ma  chvre  Cousine, — 

Ta  bonne  et  gentile  lettre  m'a  fait  plaisir,  et  j'y  ai 
songe  longtemps.  .  .  .  Sans  que  tu  t'en  doutes,  je  songe  a 
toi  et  a  ta  destinee  si  etrange,  si  romantique;  car  il  n'y 
a  rien  de  plus  romantique  que  de  s'enfermer  dans  un 
cloitre  pour  echapper  a  la  vie;  a  moins  qu'il  ne  soit  encore 
plus  romantique  de  s'echapper  d'un  cloitres  pour  se 
reconciller  avec  la  vie. 

Ma  chere  Cousine,  ta  lettre,  comme,  1'eglantine  dans  le 
bois,  respire  ton  ame  pieuse  et  exaltee  et  je  vois  que 
23  ans  dans  un  cloitre  ne  t'ont  pas  rendu  moins  femme; 
tes  sentiments  ont  pris  un  autre  tour,  voila  tout.  II  me 
semble  que  le  couvent  a  m£me  conserve  ton  cceur,  il  est 
frais,  tendre,  et  spontane.  .  .  .  Je  me  sens  attire  vers  toi 
que  je  n'ai  jamais  vue  et  que  je  ne  verrai  jamais.  Chere 
petite  cousine,  je  te  vois  au  fond  de  ton  cloitre  frangais 
avec  les  yeux  bruns  de  ta  sceur  et  j'entends  encore  dans 
ta  voix  un  leger  accent  anglais.    Ta  lettre  me  montre  que 


AVOWALS  287 

tu  n'as  pas  oublie  ton  anglais,  et  si  je  t'ecris  en  frangais 
c'est  parce  que  je  causerai  plus  a  mon  aise  avec  toi  sous  le 
voile  d'une  langue  etrangere;  et  si  je  te  tutoie  c'est  a  peu 
pres  pour  la  m§me  raison.  Nous  habitons  des  spheres 
differentes;  nous  sommes  aussi  eloignes  Tun  de  l'autre 
que  l'oiseau  du  poisson.  Mais  quoique  nos  idees  ne 
soient  pas  les  m£mes  nos  ames  sont  germaines  et  nous 
sommes  les  deux  reveurs  d'une  famille  peu  reveuse;  les 
deux  qui  ont  su  faire  des  sacrifices — toi  pour  Dieu,  moi 
pour  l'Art.  Qu'importe  le  sacrifice  pourvu  qu'on  se 
sacrifie! 

Chere  cousine,  ne  crois  pas  pour  un  instant  que  je  me 
permette  la  moindre  ironie.  Je  te  parle  du  fond  de  mon 
cceur  et  si  je  te  dis  des  choses  qui  te  semblent  etranges 
c'est  parce  que  chacun  porte  en  soi  sa  verite  et  que  ce  qui 
est  vrai  pour  l'un  est  faux  pour  l'autre.  Tu  n'accepteras 
pas  cette  doctrine;  jelesais;  mais  puisque  le  mot  doctrine 
m'a  echappe  il  faut  que  je  dise  que  ta  lettre  contient  une 
heresie.  L'Eglise  Romaine  admet  que  le  salut  est  possible 
pour  le  protestant  pourvu  qu'il  soit  de  bonne  foi;  mais  tu 
ajoutes  qu'il  n'y  a  pas  de  salut  pour  l'apostat.  Qui  te  l'a 
dit?  Pas  ton  confesseur?  L'Eglise  Romaine  a  canonise 
bien  des  saints,  mais  elle  a  tou jours  evite  de  damner  for- 
mellement  ses  ennemis.  J'ai  oui  dire  que  Judas  est  une 
exception  mais  tout  de  meme  le  catholique  peut  esperer 
que  la  bonte  de  Jesus  Christ  est  telle  qu'il  a  pu  pardonner 
au  traitre. 

L'histoire  de  Saint  Brandan  est  parmi  les  plus  anciennes 
de  nos  legendes.  Dans  son  voyage  vers  le  nord,  vers  le 
pole,  le  Saint  vit  un  homme  aux  cheveux  roux;  il  crut 
d'abord  voir  Jesus  Christ,  mais  lorsque  sa  barque  s'ap- 
procha  du  glacier  il  comprit  que  le  visage  sinistre  ne  pou- 
vait  etre  autre  que  celui  de  Judas.  Judas  lui  raconte 
qu'une  fois  par  an,  pour  une  heure,  il  lui  etait  permis 
quitter  l'enfer  et  de  soulager  ses  brulures  au  contact  de  1 
glace,  et  cette  grace  lui  fut  accordee  parce  qu'il  avait  jete 


288  AVOWALS 

son  manteau  sur  un  lepreux  mourant  a  Jappa.  Tu  vois, 
chere  cousine,  que  la  misericorde  de  Dieu  est  plus  grande 
que  tu  ne  le  croyais.  Je  ne  te  demande  pas  d'accepter 
cette  douce  legende  comme  une  verite;  mais  elle  demon tre 
combien  l'Eglise  Romaine  est  peu  disposee  a  croire  qu'il  y 
ait  des  ames  qui  brulent.  La  legende  va  trop  loin  peut- 
&tre,  mais  en  tout  cas  tu  enonces  une  heresie  quand  tu  dis: 
pas  de  salut  pour  Papostat.  Interroge  ton  confesseur,  et 
il  te  dira  que  j'ai  raison.  Mais  voila  assez  de  theologie. 
Revenons  a  l'Art — a  mon  ami  Huysmans.  Comment  as-tu 
su  qu'il  etait  mon  ami?  Sait-on  done  tout  dans  les 
cou vents?  Huysmans  fut  mon  ami  pendant  de  longues 
annees,  mais  tu  te  trompes  quand  tu  dis  qu'il  a  brtile  ses 
livres  avant  sa  mort.  D'abord  ce  n'etait  pas  possible;  ses 
livres  appartiennent  en  partie  a,  ses  editejrs  et  a  ses 
parents,  et  puis  il  etait  trop  artiste  pour  bruler  autre  chose 
que  ses  brouillons.  II  n'a  pas  voulu  que  les  choses  in- 
achevees  fussent  publiees  apres  sa  mort. 

Si  nous  laissons  de  cote  la  valeur  artistique  de  ses  ecrits 
mon  cas  est  le  m&me.  D'abord  il  faudrait  racheter  tous 
les  droits,  et  puis  faire  venir  ici  40,  50,  peut-etre  60,000 
volumes.  Un  livre  ne  se  brule  pas  facilement.  Le  poele 
de  cuisine  ne  suffrait  pas;  un  seul  livre  est  assez  pour 
eteindre  le  feu.  Alors  il  faudrait  les  reunir,  les  entasser 
les  uns  sur  les  autres  dans  mon  jardin,  et  verser  quelques 
barriques  de  petrole  sur  le  tas.  Songe  done  au  feu  que 
cela  ferait! — les  flammes  montant  plus  haut  que  les  mai- 
sons,  les  vitres  brisees  par  la  chaleur,  les  voisins  empestes 
par  la  fumee.  On  ne  pourrait  finir  d'emblee;  l'incendie 
que  tu  me  porposes  durerait  plusieurs  jours  et  plusieurs 
nuits.  La  police  interviendrait;  on  me  dresserait  con- 
travention; j'aurais  des  proces  de  mes  voisions  reclamant 
des  dommages  et  interets.    Ma  fortune  y  fondrait. 

Une  tie  dans  le  lac  de  Carra  est  le  seul  endroit  propice 
a  l'holocauste  litteraire  que  tu  souhaites.  Les  pierres  d'un 
reduit  des  anciens  guerriers  serviraient  au  brasier,  et  en  y 


AVOWALS  289 

mettant  le  temps  et  beaucoup  d'huile,  on  arriverait  sans 
doute  a  detruire  toute  ma  litterature.  Mais  .  .  .  il  y  a 
un  mais  .  .  .  tu  ne  voudrais  pas  qu'un  bon  livre  perisse 
avec  les  mauvais,  avec  les  moins  bons,  car  je  ne  peux 
admettre  qu'aucun  de  mes  livres  soit  mauvais.  Meme  a 
ton  point  de  vue,  qui  est  naturellement  restreint,  Esther 
Waters  est  un  bon  livre.  Un  critique  tres  avis6  a  dit  que 
j'ai  pris  les  beatitudes  comme  motifs  et  que  le  livre  en  est 
un  beau  developpement.  Je  ne  me  soucie  pas  de  defendre 
cet  eloge  temeraire,  mais  il  est  certain  que  mon  ceuvre 
suscite  dans  les  cceurs  pas  trop  endurcis  la  compassion 
pour  les  filles  meres,  et  qu'elle  fait  venir  des  donations  a 
l'asile  qui  porte  le  nom  de  mon  roman.  Ton  cceur  est 
trop  tendre  et  tu  connais  trop  bien  les  paroles  du  Christ 
pour  vouloir  bruler  le  livre  qui  a  cree  cette  maison  chari- 
table et  qui  la  soutient.  Non  plus  tu  ne  voudrais  pas  que 
je  brulasse  Sister  Teresa  puisqu'en  l'ecrivant  j'ai  r£ve  tres 
souvent  a  ton  cloftre,  et  en  creant  Tame  de  Sceur  Veroni- 
que  je  n'ai  songe  qu'a  toi.  Comme  toi,  elle  n'a  quitte 
l'ecole  que  pour  passer  au  noviciat.  Comme  toi,  elle  n'a 
jamias  regrette  le  choix  de  son  chemin.  Comme  toi,  elle 
fut  parfaitement  heureuse.  Tu  me  dis  dans  ta  lettre  que 
tu  Fes,  et  qu'il  n'y  a  pas  un  bonheur  plus  parfait  que  de 
vivre  avec  Dieu  et  les  sacrements.  Moi  aussi,  je  puis  dire 
que  je  suis  parfaitement  heureux  avec  mon  Art;  il  remplit 
ma  vie  d'un  bout  a  Fautre.  Je  te  l'ai  deja  dit,  nous 
sommes  les  reveurs  d'une  f  amille  peu  reveuse.  Oui,  nous 
sommes  les  heureux  vraiment.  Au  lieu  de  nous  fatiguer 
en  vains  efforts  pour  vivre  nous  nous  sommes  contentes 
de  r£ver.     Q'uimporte  le  r&ve,  pourvu  qu'on  r£ve! 

Maintenant,  chere  cousine,  accepte  ma  sympathie  et 
mon  admiration  pour  ta  vie  de  sacrifice,  si  semblable  a  la 
mienne,  quoique  si  differente,  et  sois  sure  que  j'aurais 
toujours  plaisir  a  recevoir  de  tes  nouvelles. 


290  AVOWALS 


CHAPTER  16 

t)  ALDERSTON.  Your  coffee  is  as  excellent  as  ever,  yet 
*~*  you  have  parted  with  your  cook. 

Moore.  Years  ago,  after  supping  some  of  his  fragrant 
Mocha,  I  said  to  Frank  Harris :  I  knew  you  as  a  bachelor, 
Harris;  I  knew  you  as  a  married  man,  and  now  I  know 
you  divorced  or  separated,  but  the  coffee  is  always  the 
same.  The  coffee  is  the  same,  he  answered,  but  not  for 
my  luck  in  finding  cooks  at  the  several  stages  you  have 
mentioned  who  could  make  good  coffee — that  were  im- 
possible; I  teach  them  all  to  make  coffee.  For  the  making 
of  good  coffee  only  an  earthenware  coffee  pot  fitted  with  a 
strainer  is  required;  the  complicated  apparatus  we  see 
brought  into  the  dining-room  is  useless.  From  three  to 
four  spoonfuls  go  to  make  a  cup.  And  now  comes  the 
secret.  Your  water  is  boiling  on  the  gas  stove;  you  pour 
a  little  on  to  the  coffee,  returning  the  kettle  to  the  stove 
to  boil  up  again;  and  when  the  coffee  has  gone  through 
you  pour  a  little  more  boiling  water  to  get  the  virtue  out 
of  the  coffee.  And  three  doses  are  needed.  The  cook  will 
try  to  avoid  the  trouble  but  you  must  insist,  for  coffee  that 
is  not  made  in  this  way  is  worthless. 

Balderston.  A  precious  secret  this  must  be  to  you 
who  are  indifferent  to  wine.  But  is  it  really  true  that 
you  do  not  care  for  wine,  or  is  it  one  of  your  affectations 
to  say  so? 

Moore.  My  only  affectation  is  complete  naturalness, 
for  I  am  of  Emerson's  opinion,  that  it  is  better  to  be 
than  to  seem.  Yes;  I  am  indifferent  to  the  seductions 
of  wine,  almost  aggressively,  it  would  seem,  for  one  of 
my  oldest  friends,  Theodore  Duret,  rarely  dines  with  me 
without  delivering  himself  of  an  exordium  of  my  impeni- 
tence, in  his  high  falsetto  voice.  It  is  extraordinary  that 
a  man  who  likes  all  the  good  things  of  this  life  and  has 
enjoyed  them,  art  and  beautiful  women,  and  to  some 


AVOWALS  291 

extent  the  pleasures  of  the  table,  should  have  missed  the 
taste  for  wine,  he  cries. 

Balderston.  The  wine  we  had  for  dinner  to-night 
seemed  to  me  all  right. 

Moore.  An  excellent  vin  ordinaire,  bought  at  the  Cafe 
Royal  before  the  war  at  about  eighteenpence  a  bottle,  a 
price  at  which  it  will  never  be  bought  again;  and  it  may 
be  doubted  if  the  St  Julien  of  the  future  will  be  as  honest 
a  wine  as  the  one  we  have  drunken  to-night.  Wine  there 
always  will  be  of  a  sort,  on  a  downward  path  leading  to 
the  apothecary's  shop,  for  the  old  world  is  sliding  from 
under  our  feet,  Balderston,  and  more  rapidly  than  ever. 

Balderston.  When  the  war  is  over 

Moore.  Have  I  not  heard  you  say  we  shall  all  be  crying 
for  the  good  old  days  of  the  war.  You  have  not  lived 
long  enough  in  the  world,  Balderston,  and,  of  all,  not 
thought  sufficiently,  about  the  old  world  come  down  to  us 
from  Nineveh  and  Babylon 

Balderston.  To  feel  afraid  of  change.  But  change  did 
not  begin  yesterday.  The  world  was  never  still,  not  even 
in  the  days  of  Babylon. 

Moore.  True;  we  are  always  becoming,  but  till  the 
advent  of  the  nineteenth  century  the  world  changed  in- 
sensibly. The  changes  were  not  des  changements  a  vue. 
It  may  even  be  maintained  that  the  eighteenth  century 
continued  till  1830  or  1840,  in  England;  it  continued  in 
Ireland  to  1870.  You  see,  Balderston,  I  was  born  in 
feudalism,  and  my  world  is  over  and  done.  It  may  not 
be  as  far  away  as  the  Stone  Age,  but  it  is  as  dead. 

Balderston.  You  are  not  opposed  to  all  progress? 

Moore.  No;  but  I  deprecate  calling  change  progress; 
for  men  are  the  same  as  they  always  were,  and  men's 
instincts  make  the  world  to-day  as  heretofore. 

Balderston.  But  why  speak  as  if  the  world  could  only 
deteriorate.  Why  should  you  assume  that  it  can  only 
change  in  one  direction? 


292  AVOWALS 

Moore.  The  earth  supports  certainly  a  larger  number 
of  human  beings  than  it  did  in  the  past,  but  we're  discuss- 
ing not  the  earth  but  the  world ;  and  progress  in  aesthetics 
is  impossible:  we  cannot  believe  in  sculpture  greater  than 
that  of  Athens  and  Rome.  You  will  say,  if  not  you  an- 
other, that  the  genius  of  Phidias  cannot  be  proven  like 
a  sum  in  arithmetic;  all  the  same  it  will  never  die,  for 
there  will  always  be  art  of  a  sort  in  the  world  to  keep  it 
alive  in  man's  conscience. 

Balderston.  But  what  are  your  reasons  for  assuming 
that  the  art  of  the  future  will  not  equal  the  art  of  the  past? 

Moore.  My  reasons  are  clear  and  explicit  reasons 

Balderston.  Forgive  me  for  interrupting  you,  but 
would  it  not  be  better  to  begin  by  defining  art? 

Moore.  Tolstoy  in  his  work — What  is  Art? — prints 
dozens  of  definitions,  gathered  from  the  best  works  on 
aesthetics,  but  so  little  did  these  satisfy  him  that  he  found 
himself  obliged  to  seek  another  out,  and  the  one  he  asks 
us  to  choose  in  preference  to  Herbert  Spencer's  definition, 
that  art  amuses  grown-ups  just  as  dolls  amuse  children,  is 
that  art  is  a  medium  whereby  we  communicate  sensations 
to  others,  a  definition  that  satisfies  me  less  than  Herbert 
Spencer's,  for  if  a  man  treads  upon  my  toe  violently,  he 
communicates  a  sensation,  but  it  can  hardly  be  contended 
that  by  doing  so  he  creates  a  work  of  art.  A  thing  does 
not  cease  to  exist  because  it  cannot  be  defined.  Let  us 
talk  about  art,  and  in  the  course  of  conversation  you  will 
gather  my  reasons  for  believing  that  the  democratic  world 
which  lies  ahead  of  us  will  fail  to  produce  anything  that 
will  make  the  art  of  Phidias  and  Michelangelo  seem 
shabby. 

Balderston.  If  we  may  not  try  to  define  what  art  is  it 
might  not  be  amiss  to  come  to  terms  regarding  the  origin 
of  art. 

Moore.  An  instinctive  desire  in  man  to  imitate  nature. 
You  may  indeed,  if  you  like,  throw  a  stumbling-block  in 


AVOWALS  293 

my  way,  saying  that  the  springhead  of  art  can  be  dis- 
covered in  superstition,  inasmuch  as  the  excellent  drawings 
done  by  cave  men  of  deer  and  horses  were  inspired  by  the 
belief  that  to  draw  the  animal  was  to  put  him  to  death 
potentially.  But  I  submit  this  to  be  but  scientific 
psychology,  for  have  we  not,  among  our  collections  of  pre- 
historic drawings,  one  of  a  woman  in  the  family  way,  and 
it  can  hardly  be  pleaded  that  this  drawing  was  made  so 
that  she  might  be  potentially  killed  and  eaten.  So  in  the 
absence  of  any  proof  to  the  contrary  we  will  continue  to 
believe  that  the  sketch  of  the  woman  with  child  was  man's 
first  comment  on  the  mysteries  of  nature;  a  very  natural 
and  touching  comment  it  is  too,  an  awakening  of  poetry 
in  the  heart.  The  cave  men  in  their  visitings  overlooked 
each  other's  drawings,  so  to  the  original  instinct  there 
came  a  second,  the  instinct  to  take  hints  from  the 
neighbour  in  the  hill  over  yonder;  and  when  the  races 
assembled  in  the  plains  of  Mesopotamia  to  build  cities,  the 
first  artistic  period  had  passed  by,  inasmuch  as  it  was  now 
mixed  with  many  other  visions,  and  out  of  this  mingling 
of  vision  arose  the  strange  awe-inspiring  winged  bulls  of 
Assyria,  for  Assyria  was  before  Egypt.  Art  as  it  turned 
westward  inclined  towards  naturalism,  as  an  Egyptian  lion 
in  the  British  Museum  tells  us  plainly,  while  warning  us 
that  a  new  art  formula  was  forming  in  men's  minds  in  a 
year  somewhere,  shall  we  say,  not  later  than  a  thousand 
before  our  era.  Be  the  date  of  this  lion  what  it  may,  the 
general  question  is  not  affected  thereby,  that  many  minds 
are  required  for  the  invention  of  a  complete  art  formula, 
that  we  must  peep  over  each  other's  shoulders  occa- 
sionally, but  only  occasionally,  and  that  before  the  days  of 
locomotive,  nations,  speaking  broadly,  knew  little  of  one 
another.  It  may  be  said  that  Greek  art  came  from  ths 
Egyptian,  but  it  was  a  long  way  from  Memphis  to  Athene 
— a  trip  which  few  men  took  and  at  such  long  intervals 
that  Greek  genius  had  time  to  absorb  all  the  barbarous 


294  AVOWALS 

gods  of  Asia,  turning  Jehovah  into  Zeus  and  Astoreth  into 
Venus.  We  owe  everything  to  the  Greeks,  even  Jesus, 
and  it  behoves  me  to  remark  here  (the  phrase,  we  must 
only  occasionally  look  over  our  neighbour's  shoulder,  being 
insufficient)  that  if  a  shipload  of  Elgin  Marbles  had  been 
landed  in  Yokohama  in  the  seventeenth  century,  there 
would  have  been  no  Japanese  art.  The  Japanese  would 
have  said,  this  is  the  thing  to  do,  and  they  would  have 
imitated  the  Greeks  as  badly  as  the  Romans  and  every 
other  European  race  have  done. 

Now  it  was  in  or  about  the  fourth  century  that  the 
Greek  tradition  died,  leaving  the  world  without  art  till  the 
thirteenth  century,  for  it  was  about  that  time  that  men 
began  to  invent  the  Gothic,  a  style  arising  out  of  ignor- 
ance of  the  Parthenon;  and  it  was  in  or  about  the 
fourteenth  century  that  Greece  was  rediscovered,  bringing 
to  birth  the  Renaissance,  a  combination  of  classic  and 
Gothic,  so  it  has  been  described  and  perhaps  with  some 
truth;  a  book  might  be  devoted  to  the  discussion  of  this 
subject,  but  though  it  could  be  shown  that  some  of  the 
Gothic  tradition  can  be  discovered  in  a  Renaissance 
cathedral  it  is  plain  that  the  desire  of  the  Renaissance 
was  to  escape  from  all  Gothic  influence;  and  if  they  did 
not  return  to  the  Greek  temple  it  was  because  Christi- 
anity had  drawn  the  populace  to  religion;  it  was  no  longer 
sufficient  that  the  priests  should  honour  the  Gods  in  the 
name  of  the  people;  more  room  was  required,  and  the 
palatial  period  known  as  the  Renaissance  built  palatial 
cathedrals.  It  was  all  palace  in  those  days.  The  painters 
and  sculptors  of  the  sixteenth  century  never  lost  sight  of 
the  palace;  it  was  always  in  their  minds,  inspiring  their 
art  just  as  the  house  inspired  the  Dutch  painters  of  the 
seventeenth  century.  We  have  now  arrived  at  a  sixth 
artist  period,  one  which  may  be  designated  by  a  single 
word — atmosphere,  for  atmosphere  was  never  out  of  the 
minds  of  the  Dutch  painters  even  in  their  Italian  journeys. 


AVOWALS  295 

A  Dutch  mist  is  about  in  Cuyp's  pictures  even  when  he 
was  preoccupied  by  the  golden  glow  which  Fromentin  says 
came  to  him  from  Italy;  the  great  critic-painter  might 
have  added,  that  if  we  cannot  acquit  Rembrandt  of  having 
snatched  little  figures  from  Pinturicchio,  we  must  allow 
that  he  raised  them  out  of  littleness. 

Balderston.  Steal,  therefore,  if  you  can,  for  to  do 
so  is  a  virtue  if  you  can  turn  the  stolen  penny  into  a 
ducat's  worth  by  your  handicraft,  and  steal  from  the 
poor  by  all  means,  for  their  light  is  hidden  under  a 
bushel. 

Moore.  I  approve  your  every  word,  for  true  art  and 
true  Christianity  have  nothing  in  common,  and  we  can 
easily  imagine  the  great  joy  it  would  have  been  to  the 
Italian  to  whom  Rubens  was  indebted  on  beholding  the 
realisation  of  his  dream  in  Antwerp.  Such  unselfish 
participation  in  the  glory  of  art  was  possible  in  the  happy 
time  before  art  was,  in  Whistler's  phrase,  turned  on  to  the 
town,  a  wench  to  be  chucked  under  the  chin  by  every 
passer-by,  the  whimsy,  as  he  would  have  liked  to  word 
it,  of  art  critics  and  baronets.  In  The  Ten  6* Clock  he 
blared  his  dislike  of  the  art  patron  before  he  met  the 
baronet,  without,  however,  telling  us  how  the  artist  would 
live  if  there  were  no  patrons;  which  is  the  parasite,  it  is 
hard  to  say,  but  it  is  safe  to  look  upon  patrons  as  co- 
essential,  and  coeval  though  not  necessarily  coequal  with 
the  artists.  The  twain  have  thriven  on  each  other,  and 
will  continue  to  do  so  while  there  are  artists. 

Balderston.  Do  you  think  the  time  is  coming  when 
there  will  be  no  more  artists? 

Moore.     The  Muses  are  averse  from  locomotion. 

Balderston.  When  Stephenson  was  asked  what  would 
happen  to  a  cow  if  the  animal  should  stray  on  to  the 
railway  line  he  replied  that  it  would  be  bad  for  the 
cow;  and  if  he  had  been  a  prophet  as  well  as  an  inventor 
he  would  probably  have  said:   Of  cows  there  are  plenty, 


296  AVOWALS 

and  we  can  afford  to  lose  a  few,  but  I  trust  the  Muses 
will  keep  off  the  lines. 

Moore.  I  cannot  recall  at  this  moment  the  names  and 
employments  of  the  nine,  nor  which  Muse  has  charge 
of  the  plastic  arts. 

Balderston.  I  too  should  be  puzzled  to  recall  all  their 
names.  It  would  seem  they  have  all  perished;  such 
sedate  and  high-browed  females  would  have  been  run 
over  easily;  Terpsichore,  indeed,  might  have  skipped  out 
of  the  way  of  the  train,  but  Calliope,  Melpomene  and 
Urania  walk  in  meditation. 

Moore.  The  old  world  walked  in  meditation  dreaming 
a  more  beautifuj  world,  but  the  present  dreams  of  loco- 
motion only:  how  it  may  speed  through  the  landscape 
almost  unconscious  of  it. 

Balderston.  Or  above  it,  at  a  speed  of  a  hundred  miles 
an  hour. 

Moore.  Gazing  on  the  esurient  waiter  who  proffers 
cafS  au  lait  with  such  exasperating  aggressiveness  that 
the  other  day  in  the  Tube  railway  I  started  from  my 
seat,  saying:  I  cannot  sit  opposite  that  man.  My 
travelling  companion  arose  indignant,  but  smiled  when  I 
explained  that  my  remark  did  not  refer  to  him,  but  to 
the  waiter.  Of  art  the  aerial  traveller  will  know  the 
lady  nurse  who  bears  Benger's  food  with  a  look  of  more 
than  mortal  calm  on  her  face;  he  will  feast  his  eyes  on  the 
enormous  udders  of  the  girl  who  advertises  condensed 
milk;  and  upon  the  four  joyous  whiskey  drinkers,  passing 
on  to  the  face  of  the  family  doctor  that  accompanies  the 
advertisement  of  Hall's  wine — a  veritable  masterpiece 
this  is  in  symbolism,  a  face  that  launches  upon  us  the 
villa,  the  perambulator,  the  missus,  the  cook  and  parlour- 
maid, and  the  patient. 

Balderston.  But  may  not  aerial  travelling  be  used  with 
advantage  by  art  students  pressed  for  time  who  would 


AVOWALS  297 

visit  Madrid  with  a  view  to  studying  the  methods  of 
Velazquez  and  Goya? 

Moore.  I  am  sorry,  Balderston,  that  you  should  have 
thrown  out  that  ingenuous  apology  to  aerial  travelling.  I 
was  looking  forward  to  reading  it  in  the  columns  of  our  art 
critics. 

Balderston.  You  will  read  it  in  their  columns,  dear 
master,  be  without  fear.  But  were  not  the  elder 
civilisations,  those  we  left  behind,  founded  on  slavery  and 
oppression  of  the  poor,  and  is  not  the  happiness  of  millions 
worth  a  marble  statue? 

Moore.  That  men  are  happier  to-day  than  they  were 
in  the  past  is  not  part  of  the  present  discussion.  Allow 
me  to  return  to  aesthetics.  In  the  past  the  State  did 
not  provide  art  schools  for  all  and  sundry. 

Balderston.  But  do  not  these  disseminate  a  love  of  art? 

Moore.  The  art  schools  set  up  in  Paris  in  the  nineteenth 
century  have  attracted  students  from  all  parts  of  the 
world,  and  have  produced  mannerisms,  skill,  short  cuts, 
that  fill  the  student  with  shame  as  soon  as  he  leaves  the 
school;  and  if  he  have  any  talent  at  all  his  business  is 
to  unlearn  all  he  has  been  taught.  But  we  do  not 
escape  from  what  we  have  been  taught,  and  it  is  no 
longer  easy  to  say  whether  a  portrait  was  painted  in 
Lima  or  Christiania. 

Balderston.  In  The  Confessions  of  a  Young  Man  you 
report  Renoir  as  saying:  It  may  be  that  men  will  sacrifice 
themselves  for  a  picture  or  a  book,  but  the  arts  that 
depend  on  the  support  of  the  public  are  dead. 

Moore.  Renoir  thought  that  the  capital  could  hold  out 
though  the  suburbs  had  passed  over  to  our  enemy  the 
public!  He  was  wrong.  Art  holds  together  in  all  its 
forms.  To  remove  one  stick  is  to  loosen  the  bundle. 
Beautiful  furniture  and  porcelain  will  not  be  made  again, 
and  the  time  is  by  again  when  nobody  will  be  able  to 
illustrate  a  book.     We  pick  up  for  a  few  shillings  a  copy 


298  AVOWALS 

of  La  Fontaine's  Fables  filled  with  illustrations  engraved 
on  steel,  and  recognise  in  them  an  art  that  has  passed 
away  for  ever. 

Balderston.  While  giving  you  an  attentive  ear  to  all 
you  say,  I  have  been  trying  to  pick  out  of  my  wretched 
memory  the  names  of  the  Muses  one  by  one,  and  I  think 
I  have  gotten  them  all:  Calliope,  the  Muse  of  rhetoric 
and  heroic  poetry,  stands  at  their  head,  and  next  to  her 
is  Thalia,  the  Muse  of  pastoral  poetry;  Erato,  the  Muse 
of  amatory  poetry,  comes  next,  crowned  with  roses.  Clio 
and  Melpomene,  Muses  of  graver  mien,  preside  over 
history  and  dramatic  poetry.  All  wind  instruments  are 
in  the  keeping  of  Euterpe.  Urania  watches  the  stars; 
Terpsichore  directs  the  dance,  and 

Moore.    And  the  ninth 

Balderston.  I  have  racked  my  brains  but  to  no  avail, 
which  is  a  pity,  for  the  ninth  may  be  the  Muse  that  was 
killed  on  the  railway  track. 

Moore.  And  there  being  no  Muse  to  look  after  them, 
the  Plastic  Arts  strayed  on  to  the  railway  track  incon- 
tinently and  were  killed.  Your  contention  then  is  that 
all  the  forms  of  literature,  eloquence,  dramatic  and 
pastoral  poetry,  lyrical  and  amatory,  history,  have  been 
saved;  a  bold  contention  conceived  in  a  moment  of 
absentmindedness,  for  you  know  that  the  desire  of  our 
best  authors  is  to  provide  a  literary  fare  that  will  compare 
favourably  with  an  international  dinner  at  an  up-to-date 
hotel,  and  this  ambition  will  be  realised  as  soon  as  they 
have  gotten  the  universal  language,  which  cannot  be  long 
delayed  in  coming. 

Balderston.  You  think  it  will  be  brought  over  in  aero- 
planes like  rabies? 

Moore.  With  this  difference,  that  though  we  are  averse 
from  catching  rabies  the  common  lot  would  like  to  speak 
a  few  words  of  as  many  languages  as  possible  without 
learning  any. 


AVOWALS  299 

Balderston.  I  might  remind  you  that  you  have  ad- 
mitted on  more  than  one  occasion  that  you  owe  a  great 
deal  to  France  and  the  French  language,  but  if  I  were 
to  press  you  to  extricate  yourself  from  the  dilemma  you 
are  clearly  in,  I  should  miss  hearing  you  on  a  more 
interesting  subject — the  decline  of  language,  of  the 
English  language  presumably,  which  may  be  said  to  have 
had  its  beginning  at  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century  as 
a  literary  language,  and  to  have  reached  its  prime  at  the 
end  of  the  sixteenth.  You  have  not  forgotten  that  in 
Elizabethan  days  there  was  already  talk  of  decline. 

Moore.  But  why  should  I  talk  on  a  subject  in  which 
you  are  more  knowledgeable  than  I  am. 

Balderston.  Because  you  went  to  Ireland  on  a  gram- 
matical crusade,  and  remained  there  upwards  of  ten  years, 
regretting  the  dropping  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  cases;  and 
I  suppose  it  is  arguable  that  prepositions  are  not  as 
graceful  as  cases. 

Moore.  I  am  altogether  with  you  regarding  the  cases, 
but  the  loss  of  these  is  but  a  small  loss  compared  with 
that  of  the  second  person  singular  of  the  verb. 

Balderston.  Which  we  Quakers  tried  to  revive  for 
moral  reasons. 

Moore.  A  most  interesting  experiment,  which  dropped 
you  into  quagmire,  the  beautiful  nominative  thou  disap- 
pearing, and  thee  serving  for  nominative  and  dative,  a 
barbarism  that  sets  me  thinking  that  our  race  is  altogether 
insensible  to  the  charm  of  grammar. 

Balderston.  You  would  not  place  grammar  above 
idiom? 

Moore.  Idiom  is  lord  over  grammar;  yet  it  is  hard 
to  imagine  a  language  in  which  there  is  no  rule,  only 
usage. 

Balderston.  But  a  language  in  which  every  word 
agrees  with  another  word,  like  Latin,  moves  with  diffi- 
culty and  in  stricken  attitudes. 


300  AVOWALS 

Moore.  But  is  that  true?  We  never  meet  anybody  un- 
willing to  admit  that  if  he  had  to  choose  verses  other  than 
his  own  he  would  choose  to  sign  Virgil's.  I  remember 
Catulle  Mendes  likening,  one  night  of  great  moonlight  in 
the  Place  Pigalle,  French  poetry  to  two  horses  yoked  to  a 
chariot  cantering  in  perfect  rhythm,  and  English  poetry 
to  winged  horses  that  could  rise  above  the  earth. 

Balderston.  But  is  it  not  well  to  rise  from  the 
earth? 

Moore.  It  is  indeed,  but  on  the  condition  that  you  do 
not  lose  yourself  in  the  clouds;  a  misfortune  that  may 
happen  if  grammar  is  thrown  to  the  winds.  You  see  I  am 
still  thinking  of  the  aeroplane.  You  has  become  singular, 
yet  it  is  used  with  a  plural  verb;  and  the  eighteenth 
century  was  right,  we  should  say  you  was;  and  having  lost 
its  grammar,  it  would  seem  that  the  English  language  is 
in  a  fair  way  of  losing  its  romantic  idiom,  by  which  it  lives 
as  a  literary  language,  for  every  Board  School  teacher 
deems  it  her  duty  to  wring  all  living  idiom  out  of  the 
children.  I  hear  a  good  deal  of  thouing  and  theeing  going 
on,  so  I  suppose  you  wish  to  remain  little  peasants  all  your 
lives,  the  teacher  cries,  speaking  from  the  threshold  to  the 
little  ones  at  play. 

The  Board  School  is  the  enemy  of  the  writer  as  the 
photographer  is  the  enemy  of  the  painter,  and  literature  is 
snuffed  out  by  the  Minister  of  Education,  who  is,  of  course, 
resolute  that  everybody  shall  receive  a  huge  dose  of  educa- 
tion before  going  to  work  in  the  factory  or  the  mine.  The 
curriculum  includes  a  course  of  modern  languages,  despite 
the  fact  that  nobody  can  learn  a  second  language,  and  very 
few  a  first.  The  Minister  cannot  hold  a  conversation  in 
French,  and  knows  he  could  not  learn  French  if  he  were  to 
spend  years  at  it,  but  he  thinks  he  can  teach;  alas,  every- 
body thinks  he  can  teach.  And  in  accordance  with  this 
belief  hundreds  come  up  to  Kensington  to  pass  examina- 
tions in  modelling  clay  apples,  getting  a  diploma  thereby, 


AVOWALS  301 

which  will  enable  them  to  teach  sculpture  in  the  pro- 
vinces. A  little  drawing,  a  little  sculpture,  a  little  piano, 
and  of  all  a  little  French,  for  every  boy  and  girl  must 
have  a  chance  of  learning  French;  and  the  result  of  the 
French  lesson  is  that  the  middle  classes  will  soon  know 
as  much  French  as  the  upper,  which  amounts  to  no  more 
than  a  sufficiency  of  French  words  for  the  corruption  of 
the  English  language.  To  many  people  it  sounds  refined, 
even  cultured,  to  drop  stereotyped  French  into  stereo- 
typed English  phrases.  To  use  badinage  for  banter,  and 
to  think  that  there  is  a  shade  of  difference,  or  I  suppose 
I  should  say,  a  nuance  of  meaning.  Yes,  Balderston,  I 
am  looking  forward  to  reading  in  the  newspapers  a  prScis 
of  a  rSsumS  of  a  communique.  You  see  I  omit  the  accent 
on  the  last  e,  and  I  wish  you  would  tell  me  if  the  people 
who  speak  and  write  this  jargon  think  that  rSsumS  is 
more  refined  than  summary,  abridgment,  compendium. 
In  society  every  woman  is  tres  raffinie.  I  once  met  an 
author  who  had  written  small  and  petite,  and  when  I 
asked  him  why  he  did  it,  he  said:  Petite  means  dainty 
as  well  as  small;  I  said:  No,  it  doesn't,  but  if  you 
wanted  to  say  dainty,  why  didn't  you  say  dainty?  One 
of  the  most  beautiful  words  in  our  language  is  bodice, 
but  it  has  given  way  to  corsage,  and  there  is  no  author 
now  living  amongst  us  who  would  not  prefer  to  write: 
the  delicious  naivetS  of  it,  rather  than:  the  delicious 
simplicity  of  it,  or  the  delicious  innocency  of  it.  None 
seems  aware  that  naivetS  is  a  dead  word  in  our  language, 
yet  the  wretches  say  they  cannot  express  their  ideas 
unless  they  be  permitted  to  use  French,  to  which  I 
answer:  do  not  worry  about  the  ideas,  think  of  the  words, 
and  of  all,  try  to  distinguish  between  the  quick  and  the 
dead.  Innocency  and  simplicity  have  been  in  the  lan- 
guage for  more  than  two  hundred  years,  and  are  fragrant 
of  it.  For  the  last  four  months  we  have  had  armistice, 
never  truce,  and  it  is  hard  to  discover  a  modern  book  in 


302  AVOWALS 

which  the  writer  does  not  flaunt  his  knowledge  of  the 
word  mitier.  I  say  flaunt,  for  he  must  know  that  he  has 
three  words  to  choose  from:  trade,  business,  craft.  Our 
language  is  becoming  leaner.  Translate  Memoirs  of  my 
Dead  Life,  and  you  get  Mimoirs  de  ma  Vie  Morte.  I  have 
a  cousin  in  a  convent  at  Lourdes,  and  thinking  she  might 
have  forgotten  English  in  the  twenty  years  she  had 
spent  in  France,  I  wrote  to  her  in  French,  and  there 
came  into  my  letter  this  phrase:  Nous  sommes  lesdeux 
reveurs  d'unefamille  peu  reveuse,  a  phrase  difficult  to  render 
into  English  owing  to  that  lack  of  grammar  which  the 
unity  of  our  Empire  demands.  Everything  has  its  price — 
Empire  assuredly:  it  would  seem  that  we  must  furnish  a 
language  that  can  be  learnt  easily  by  our  dependencies, 
and  we  are  doing  it,  shall  I  say,  by  leaps  and  bounds. 
In  America  you  invent  new  words,  and  all  that  comes 
out  of  our  own  imagination  is  welcome;  yet  many  who 
would  not  write  stunt,  take  pleasure  in  that  disgraceful 
word  camouflage,  turning  it  recklessly  into  a  verb,  a 
thing  unthinkable  to  a  Frenchman  or  to  anybody  who 
has  acquired  even  a  small  part  of  the  French  ear.  But 
can  you  tell  me  which  possesses  the  most  complete 
grammar,  English  or  Sioux? 

Balderston.  WhenI  wasatHarvard,  Sioux  was  optional. 

Moore.  Probably  the  Sioux  is,  and  it  would  have  been 
better  if  you  had  adopted  Sioux,  for  there  is  no  extensive 
literature  in  Sioux,  I  believe;  and  the  womb  being  young 
and  Indians  uneducated  you  would  get  an  influence 
comparable  to  that  which  the  peasant  exercised  before 
English  was  corrupted  by  the  Board  School.  Peasants 
use  images  inspired  by  what  they  look  at.  If  I  ask  my 
parlour-maid,  who  was  a  peasant  a  while  ago,  to  find 
something  I  have  lost,  she  will  say:  I'll  have  a  look  around. 
If  I  ask  you,  you  will  answer:  I'll  try  to  find  it.  Which 
phrase  conveys  the  image?  But  it  seems  to  me,  Balder- 
ston, that  I  have  been  exceptionally  talkative  this  evening, 


AVOWALS  303 

and  I  beg  you  to  say  something  and  allow  me  to  slink  into 
silence  for  a  little  while. 

Balderston.  When  you  went  to  Paris  and  became  the 
friend  of  all  the  great  writers  and  painters  of  the  seventies 
and  the  eighties,  you  listened  to  them;  you  did  not  in- 
terrupt Goncourt  with  crude  opinions,  for  in  the  seventies 
you  were  only  beginning  to  form  the  opinions  which  you 
can  cast  into  words  to-day. 

Moore.  A  gracious  and  a  sensible  answer,  and  yet 
almost  a  reproof. 

Balderston.  No  reproof  was  intended;  a  statement  of 
a  fact  can  hardly  be  considered  as  a  reproof. 

Moore.  Quite  true;  the  reproof  came  from  me.  I 
reproved  you  for  leaving  me  to  do  all  the  talking. 

Balderston.  As  soon  as  the  position  of  the  armies  on 
the  Flanders  front  creeps  in  my  turn  will  come,  and  lest 
it  should  come  too  soon  I  will  remark  that  I  see  a  brown 
book  on  the  table.  Whistler's  The  Gentle  Art  of  Making 
Enemies,  The  very  thing!  Let  me  set  him  against  you. 
He  shall  speak  for  me,  giving  reasons,  which  you  will 
find  hard  to  refute,  why  there  never  was  an  artistic 
period,  and  that  the  artist  is  a  man  apart  from  and 
uninfluenced  by  his  fellows,  thereby  denying  that  segre- 
gation, locomotion,  or  any  external  conditions  can  have 
any  influence  whatever  upon  art,  since  art  is  the  artist. 

Moore.  Thereby  asserting  that  if  he,  Whistler,  had 
been  born  in  the  fifteenth  century,  he  would  have  painted 
pictures  similar  in  style  to  those  he  painted  in  the  nine- 
teenth. We  sparred  round  that  question  in  Paris,  and 
Whistler  began  to  explain  that  he  had  been  misunder- 
stood, and  as  that  means  in  Whistlerian  that  he  had 
begun  to  think  he  had  gone  too  far,  I  did  not  tease  him, 
saying,  that  an  artistic  period  only  meant  a  time  in  which 
there  are  more  good  artists  than  at  another  time,  asking 
him  if  he  was  prepared  to  deny  that  there  were  more 
great  artists  in  the  sixteenth  century  than  in  the  tenth, 


304  AVOWALS 

that  Michelangelo,  Donatello,  Andrea  del  Sarto  and 
Leonardo  lived  contemporaneously  in  a  town  half  as  big 
as  Chelsea  and  so  forth.  As  a  sledge-hammer  is  not  a 
weapon  to  pursue  a  butterfly  with,  I  will  tell  a  tale. 
Story,  a  sculptor,  had  given  evidence  favourable  to 
Whistler  in  the  Whistler-Ruskin  action  for  libel,  and 
ever  afterwards  Whistler  felt  himself  compelled  to  speak 
of  the  trays  of  little  figures  six  inches  high  which  Story 
used  to  exhibit  in  the  Grosvenor  Galleries  as  very  similar, 
if  not  altogether  equal  to  the  Elgin  Marbles,  and  I 
being  in  those  days  entirely  submissive  to  Whistler's 
genius,  did  not  dare  do  else  than  to  acquiesce  in  this 
strange  appreciation  of  Story's  very  small  talent.  Every 
time  his  name  was  mentioned  my  face  brightened.  Story 
— Elgin  Marbles,  of  course!  But  no  sooner  was  the 
master's  back  turned  than  my  face  darkened,  and  I 
began  to  ask  myself  why  Story's  figures  were  like  the 
Elgin  Marbles,  and  all  spare  moments  were  spent  in 
trying  to  unriddle  the  riddle;  till  one  day  in  the 
Grosvenor  Gallery,  as  I  stood  pondering  the  problem  of 
the  likeness  of  Story's  figures  to  the  Elgin  Marbles,  I 
caught  sight  of  Whistler  coming  down  the  Gallery.  Now 
or  never,  I  said,  is  my  chance  to  find  out  the  Why,  and 
catching  the  master  by  the  arm,  I  said:  Tell  me,  sir, 
why  these  figures  are  like  the  Elgin  Marbles?  Well, 
you  see,  Whistler  answered:  you  know — well — you  see 
you  can  take  it  up  and  you  can  put  it  down;  and  then, 
you  see,  you  look  at  it;  you  can  take  it  up;  you  can 
put  it  down;  you  look  at  it  again — and  that  which  is — 
why,  of  course,  the  relation  of  art  to  nature — the  pre- 
rogative of  the  artist,  for  art  is  not  nature  because  it 
is  art,  and  nature  is  not  art  because  it  is  art — nature 
which  is  not  art  because  it  is  nature — art  which  is  not 
nature  because — well,  because  the  spontaneous  creation 

and  living  creation  of  the  artist  is And  leaving  his 

sentence  still  hung  up,  he  cried:   Come  along,  my  dear 


AVOWALS  305 

fellow — come  along,  lunch,  bunch — lunch,  bunch — lunch, 
bunch — lunch,  bunch. 

As  I  have  said,  Story  had  given  evidence  for  Whistler 
in  his  suit  against  Ruskin,  and  Whistler's  notion  of 
gratitude  was  to  compare  Story's  work  to  the  Elgin 
Marbles. 

Balderston.  A  very  amusing  anecdote.  But  I  should 
like  to  hear  why  Whistler  said  that  an  artist  stands  apart 
and  is  uninfluenced  by  his  surroundings. 

Moore.  One  day  we  were  out  walking,  the  master  and  I, 
and  he  said :  Moore,  what  stupid,  ugly  boots  you're  wearing. 
And  in  great  surprise  I  answered :  Stupid,  ugly  boots !  Why 
are  they  ugly?  I  thought  them  a  remarkable  good  fit. 
They  came  only  a  week  ago  from  Bull's  in  the  Burlington 

Arcade,  and  he  is  reputed  to  be Why  wear  such  ugly 

boots  ?  the  master  continued.     Boots  with  toes  pointed  like 

yours  are  not  fit  to  be  worn  by  a  man  who A  burst  of 

laughter  cut  the  sentence  short,  and  presently  I  heard 
that  a  square-toed  boot  is  the  only  boot  that  any  artist 
who  considers  himself  can  wear.  I  had  not  thought 
pointed  toes  shocking  or  frightful,  but,  never  thinking 
to  contest  Whistler's  judgment,  I  determined  forthright 
not  to  order  another  pair,  and  not  to  wear  the  pair  on 
my  feet  except  in  the  country,  when  nobody  was  looking. 
It  was  not  long  afterward  that  I  met  Mrs.  Whistler, 
and  fortuning  to  say  something  about  her  husband's 
views  of  aesthetic  boots,  she  answered:  Jimmie  has  to 
wear  square  toes  for  he  has  a  deformed  foot.  So  you 
see,  his  foot  being  deformed  he  found  himself  obliged 
to  evolve  a  theory  that  square  toes  were  beautiful  and 
pointed  toes  ugly,  and  because  he  was  an  American 
and  America  had  no  artistic  tradition,  he  found  himself 
obliged  to  declare  at  the  top  of  his  voice  that  there  had 
never  been  an  artistic  period  and  that  the  artist  was  apart 
from  and  uninfluenced  by  his  fellows.  He  learnt  his 
painting  in  Paris  from  Courbet  and  others,  but  to  hide  the 


306  AVOWALS 

fact  that  he  was  a  product  like  every  man  he  spoke  of  his 
days  in  Paris  as  idle  days,  saying  that  while  others  were 
at  work  in  the  studios  he  was  sauntering  in  the  public 
gardens  or  dreaming  along  the  quays.  I  am  that  I  am, 
was  his  belief  as  much  as  it  was  Iahveh's;  more  than  it 
was  his  Palestinian  predecessor's,  for  he  did  not  call  in 
his  Moses  to  write  his  commandments,  he  wrote  them 
himself,  and  Ten  O'Clock  was  written  to  compel  others 
to  regard  him  as  a  prodigy,  a  sort  of  sacrament,  an  article 
of  faith. 

Balderston.  I  see  that  he  has  written  in  your  copy  of 
The  Gentle  Art.     May  I  read? 

Moore.    Certainly. 

Balderston.   To  George  Moore — for  furtive  reading. 

Moore.  You  see  Whistler  had  read  Modern  Painting, 
and  finding  that  there  were  some  pages  in  the  book  which 
fell  in  with  his  own  appreciation  of  the  art  of  painting  he 
could  not  do  else  than  suggest  to  me  that  Modern  Painting 
was  derived  from  The  Ten  o' Clock,  hence  the  inscription. 
He  asked  me  if  I  would  mind  if  he  wrote  something,  that 
which,  etc.  I  cannot  remember  how  the  sentence  ended. 
It  probably  did  not  end,  but  his  manner  led  me  to  under- 
stand that  he  wished  to  put  a  joke  upon  me,  so  I  begged 
him  to  have  his  joke,  and  there  it  is  recorded  in  his  own 
hand:  For  furtive  reading,  which  means  that  anything 
George  Moore  writes — anything  good  that  he  writes  about 
painting — was  plagiarised  from  me,  James  McNeill 
Whistler. 

It  requires  your  genius,  as  Degas  said  to  him,  to  save 
you  from  ridicule.  An  absurd  man  in  his  vanities  he  was, 
but  his  paintings  are  as  original  as  any,  and  The  Ten  o' Clock 
is  one  of  the  dainty  bits  of  prose  in  the  English  language. 
Let  me  read  you  a  passage: 

False  again,  the  fabled  link  between  the  grandeur  of 
Art  and  the  glories  and  virtues  of  the  State,  for  Art  feeds 


AVOWALS  307 

not  upon  nations,  and  peoples  may  be  wiped  from  the  face 
of  the  earth,  but  Art  is. 

It  is  indeed  high  time  that  we  cast  aside  the  weary- 
weight  of  responsibility  and  co-partnership,  and  know  that, 
in  no  way,  do  our  virtues  minister  to  its  worth,  in  no  way 
do  our  vices  impede  its  triumph! 

How  irksome!  how  hopeless!  how  superhuman  the  self- 
imposed  task  of  the  nation!  How  sublimely  vain  the 
belief  that  it  shall  live  nobly  or  Art  perish. 

Let  us  reassure  ourselves,  at  our  own  option  is  our 
virtue.     Art  we  in  no  way  affect. 

A  whimsical  goddess,  and  a  capricious,  her  strong  sense 
of  joy  tolerates  no  dullness,  and,  live  we  never  so  spotlessly, 
still  may  she  turn  her  back  upon  us. 

As,  from  time  immemorial,  she  has  done  upon  the  Swiss 
in  their  mountains. 

What  more  worthy  people!  Whose  every  Alpine  gap 
yawns  with  tradition,  and  is  stocked  with  noble  story;  yet, 
the  perverse  and  scornful  one  will  have  none  of  it,  and  the 
sons  of  patriots  are  left  with  the  clock  that  turns  the  mill, 
and  the  sudden  cuckoo,  with  difficulty  restrained  in  its 
box! 

For  this  was  Tell  a  hero!    For  this  did  Gessler  die! 

Art,  the  cruel  jade,  cares  not,  and  hardens  her  heart, 
and  hies  her  off  to  the  East,  to  find,  amid  the  opium-eaters 
of  Nankin,  a  favourite  with  whom  she  lingers  fondly — 
caressing  his  blue  porcelain,  and  painting  his  coy  maidens, 
and  marking  his  plates  with  her  six  marks  of  choice — 
indifferent  in  her  companionship  with  him,  to  all  save  the 
virtue  of  his  refinement! 

He  it  is  who  calls  her — he  who  holds  her! 

But,  Balderston,  there  is  another  that  you  must  hear: 

That  Nature  is  always  right,  is  an  assertion,  artistically, 
as  untrue,  as  it  is  one  whose  truth  is  universally  taken  for 
granted.     Nature  is  very  rarely  right,  to  such  an  extent 


308  AVOWALS 

even,  that  it  might  almost  be  said  that  Nature  is  usually- 
wrong:  that  is  to  say,  the  condition  of  things  that  shall 
bring  about  the  perfection  of  harmony  worthy  a  picture 
is  rare,  and  not  common  at  all. 

This  would  seem,  to  even  the  most  intelligent,  a 
doctrine  almost  blasphemous.  So  incorporated  with  our 
education  has  the  supposed  aphorism  become,  that  its 
belief  is  held  to  be  part  of  our  moral  being,  and  the  words 
themselves  have,  in  our  ear,  the  ring  of  religion.  Still, 
seldom  does  Nature  succeed  in  producing  a  picture. 

The  sun  blares,  the  wind  blows  from  the  east,  the  sky 
is  bereft  of  cloud,  and  without,  all  is  of  iron.  The  windows 
of  the  Crystal  Palace  are  seen  from  all  points  of  London. 
The  holiday  maker  rejoices  in  the  glorious  day,  and  the 
painter  turns  aside  to  shut  his  eyes. 

How  little  this  is  understood,  and  how  dutifully  the 
casual  in  Nature  is  accepted  as  sublime,  may  be  gathered 
from  the  unlimited  admiration  daily  produced  by  a  very 
foolish  sunset. 

The  dignity  of  the  snow-capped  mountain  is  lost  in 
distinctness,  but  the  joy  of  the  tourist  is  to  recognise  the 
traveller  on  the  top.  The  desire  to  see,  for  the  sake  of 
seeing,  is,  with  the  mass,  alone  the  one  to  be  gratified, 
hence  the  delight  in  detail. 

And  when  the  evening  mist  clothes  the  riverside  with 
poetry,  as  with  a  veil,  and  the  poor  buildings  lose  them- 
selves in  the  dim  sky,  and  the  tall  chimneys  become 
campanili,  and  the  warehouses  palaces  in  the  night,  and 
the  whole  city  hangs  in  the  heavens,  and  fairyland  is 
before  us — then  the  wayfarer  hastens  home;  the  working 
man  and  the  cultured  one,  the  wise  man  and  the  one  of 
pleasure,  cease  to  understand,  as  they  have  ceased  to  see, 
and  Nature,  who,  for  once,  has  sung  in  tune,  sings  her 
exquisite  song  to  the  artist  alone,  her  son  and  her  master 
— her  son  in  that  he  loves  her,  her  master  in  that  he 
knows  her. 


AVOWALS  309 

To  him  her  secrets  are  unfolded,  to  him  her  lessons 
have  become  gradually  clear.  .  .  . 

Through  his  brain,  as  through  the  last  alembic,  is  dis- 
tilled the  refined  essence  of  that  thought  which  began 
with  the  Gods,  and  which  they  left  him  to  carry  out. 

Set  apart  by  them  to  complete  their  works,  he  produces 
that  wondrous  thing  called  the  masterpiece,  which  sur- 
passes in  perfection  all  that  they  have  contrived  in  what 
is  called  Nature;  and  the  Gods  stand  by  and  marvel,  and 
perceive  how  far  away  more  beautiful  is  the  Venus  of 
Melos  than  was  their  own  Eve. 

So  beautiful  is  it,  it  brings  tears  to  the  eyes.  Would 
you  like  to  hear  it  again? 

Balderston.  I  should  indeed. 

Moore.  Very  few  of  the  younger  generation  open  The 
Gentle  Art  of  Making  Enemies,  and  fewer  still  have  seen 
Buskin's  beautiful  drawings,  for  Whistler's  dogged  egotism 
forced  him  to  speak  disparagingly  of  them,  though  none 
knew  their  worth  as  well  as  he.  How  much  better  it 
would  have  been  to  have  spewed  out  of  his  mouth  the 
thick  clotted  prose  of  The  Seven  Lamps  of  Architecture, 
and  to  have  praised  the  pencil  that  followed  pensively  the 
vaporous  folds  in  a  certain  range  of  mountains  fronting 
the  seashore. 

Balderston.  You  reproved  me  for  my  silence,  for  being 
too  good  a  listener. 

Moore.  You  should  have  forgotten  that  reproof  if  it 
were  one. 

Balderston.  I  shall.  If  by  observing  a  leak  in  your 
argument  I  may  make  amends  for  my  attention. 

Moore.  By  all  means. 

Balderston.  Music  has  not  been  affected  by  the  steam- 
boat, the  railway,  the  telegraph  wire. 

Moore.  I  am  glad  you  have  dragged  music  into  the 
discussion,  for  I  can  tell  a  tale,  how  last  night  in  the 
course  of  a  varied  conversation  I  mentioned  to  Jean  Aubry 


310  AVOWALS 

that  I  had  heard  three  pieces  of  music  that  had  set  me 
thinking.  I  will  describe  the  three  pieces  to  you,  I  said, 
and  it  will  be  interesting  to  see  if  you  can  guess  the 
composers'  names.  The  first  piece  was  a  quintet.  The 
instruments  employed  were  clarinet,  violins,  viola  and 
violoncello,  and  in  the  first  movement  the  composer 
seemed  to  have  thought  only  of  the  melody  he  might  give 
to  the  clarinet;  and  a  great  pour  of  rich  voluptuous  song 
he  gave  to  it  on  a  background  of  strings  vaguely  murmur- 
ing, twittering  dimly,  the  cello  uttering  now  and  then 
a  few  grave  notes.  And  my  imagination  lighting  up 
at  the  idea  half  expressed,  I  said:  a  nightingale  sings  in 
a  bare  elm  branch,  keeping  the  birds  in  the  hedgerow 
awake;  linnets,  willow,  wren,  chaffinch  and  garden 
warbler,  cannot  sleep,  so  overpowering  is  the  song.  Again 
it  broke  forth,  provoking  the  violins  to  twittering  just 
as  if  they  were  no  more  than  linnets,  I  said.  And  then 
the  viola  awoke  suddenly  and  my  thoughts  began  to  seek 
some  bird  to  which  to  match  it,  but  before  pitching  upon 
one  the  clarinet,  just  like  a  nightingale,  compelled  me  to 
give  all  my  thoughts  to  it;  curve  after  curve  rising  out 
of  melodious  curve,  spirals  forming  and  melting,  new 
sound  shapes  rising  and  passing  away  like  the  clouds.  I 
might  talk  to  you  of  Shelley's  Skylark,  I  said,  but  through 
that  beautiful  ode  runs  a  moral  thread,  and  I  heard  none 
in  the  clarinet.  You  compared  the  clarinet  to  the  night- 
ingale, Aubry  replied. 

And  he  guessed  the  composer's  name  correctly.  I'm 
afraid,  I  said,  I  cannot  give  as  picturesque  a  description 
of  the  second  quinter  for  the  same  instruments:  clarinet, 
viola,  violins  and  violoncello,  for  the  piece  did  not  evoke 
any  picture  or  image  in  my  mind,  only  a  certain  admira- 
tion for  the  skill  with  which  the  composer  broidered  the 
clarinet  into  the  musical  texture,  never  leaving  it  to 
outsing  the  other  instruments:  excellent  music,  it  was, 
no  doubt,  lacking  little  but  nationality  and  individual 


AVOWALS  311 

genius;  the  mark  of  a  man  who  seems  to  have  admired 
the  dry  bits  in  Beethoven.  Aubry  made  two  bad  guesses 
and  then  a  good  one. 

The  third  piece,  I  said,  began  with  fifteen  or  twenty 
bars  of  jiggering  rhythm  that  anybody  could  write  if  he 
chose  to  transcribe  what  he  might  hear  in  a  barn  in  which 
peasants  had  assembled  for  dancing,  a  ragged  prelude  to 
a  second  movement,  one  in  which  I  faintly  apprehended 
a  sort  of  chant  intended  to  represent  monks  singing  in  a 
monastery.  The  instruction  given  how  to  produce  the 
maximum  amount  of  discord  seemed  to  be  ingeniously 
contrived,  and  the  last  movement  (the  word  movement 
seems  out  of  keeping  with  such  ragged  stuff)  represented 
a  juggler  at  his  antics,  so  one  of  the  musicians  informed 
me;  it  might  have  been  that  or  anything  else.  But  you, 
Aubry,  who  have  much  knowledge  of  modern  music,  may 
risk  your  reputation  in  the  adventure  of  a  guess.  He 
began  with  guesses  wide  of  the  mark,  but  before  admitting 
defeat,  he  asked:  Is  it  English  music?    And  on  my  telling 

him  it  was  not,  he  said:   Then  it  is, and  he  blurted 

out  the  right  name.  Of  course  he  may  have  been  feign- 
ing a  cunning  ignorance  whereby  to  astonish  me  with  his 
cleverness  in  guessing  the  authorship  of  several  pieces 
of  music  from  my  verbal  description  of  them.  But  it 
doesn't  matter  if  he  duped  me,  for  the  point  I  wish  to 
make  is  that  these  three  pieces  of  music  tell  how  art 
is  inspired  in  the  first  period,  sustained  by  craft,  skill, 
erudition  in  the  second,  and  falls  afterwards  into  sterile 
eccentricities. 

Balderston.  If  I  were  not  afraid  that  the  question 
would  lead  us  far  from  the  subject  of  this  conversation,  I 
should  like  to  ask  you  the  names  of  the  three  composers 
whom  your  friend  was  clever  enough  to  guess,  but  before 
you  tell  me,  I'd  like  to  ask  if  art  has  come  to  the  end  of 
her  spool  in  Europe,  may  not  the  Goddess  begin  to  un- 
wind again  in  America. 


312  AVOWALS 

Moore.  That  art  is  proved  among  the  gone  should  not 
concern  us  overmuch,  for  the  history  of  art  is  complete, 
as  Whistler  observed  in  his  Ten  c? Clock',  and  at  the  risk  of 
making  my  own  prose  seem  contemptible  I  will  quote 
from  him  again: 

Therefore  have  we  cause  to  be  merry! — and  to  cast 
away  all  care — resolved  that  all  is  well — as  it  ever  was — 
and  that  it  is  not  meet  that  we  should  be  cried  at,  and 
urged  to  take  measures! 

Enough  have  we  endured  of  dullness!  Surely  are  we 
weary  of  weeping,  and  our  tears  have  been  cozened  from 
us  falsely,  for  they  have  called  out  woe!  When  there 
was  no  grief,  and  alas!   where  all  is  fair! 

We  have  then  but  to  wait — until,  with  the  mark  of  the 
Gods  upon  him — there  come  among  us  again  the  chosen — 
who  shall  continue  what  has  gone  before.  Satisfied  that, 
even  were  he  never  to  appear,  the  story  of  the  beautiful 
is  already  complete — hewn  in  the  marbles  of  the  Parthenon 
— and  broidered  with  the  birds  upon  the  fan  of  Hokusai 
at  the  foot  of  Fusiyama. 

Every  sentence  in  the  page  reminds  one  of  the  etchers' 
needle,  so  exquisite  is  the  touch.  Touch  he  had  almost  in 
excess  in  oil  and  water  and  in  prose  too.  But  enough  of 
praise.  You  want  an  answer  to  your  question:  Will  art 
go  and  will  art  return — and  I'll  give  the  best  I  can  find 
to-day:  it  is  certain  that  the  formula  whereby  we  have 
known  art  for  the  last  four  centuries  will  not  return;  the 
field  has  been  reaped,  the  corn  has  been  garnered. 

Balderston.  Might  not  another  formula  arise  in 
America,  a  new  country? 

Moore.  Whistler's  vanity  forbade  him  to  accept  the 
only  too  evident  fact  that  one  man  does  not  create  a 
formula.  Many  men  of  genius  are  needed  and  certain 
conditions  of  life.  But  as  Whistler  counsels  us  we  need 
not  make  moan  over  the  disappearance  of  the  goddess; 
other  things  have  taken  her  place.    Locomotion  we  have 


AVOWALS  313 

of  all  kinds;  we  shall  soon  travel  to  see  and  hear  the  same 
sights  and  sounds  from  one  end  of  the  earth  to  the  other? 
But  why  make  moan?  Art  will  come  back  to  us  when 
these  conditions  are  replaced  by  others,  Balderston. 
You  know,  we  all  know,  that  for  about  eight  hundred 
years  there  was  no  art;  and  whatever  has  happened  once 
will  happen  again.  The  best  friends  have  to  part  often 
so  that  they  may  meet  again.  Art  has  been  with  us  for 
about  four  hundred  years,  and  four  hundred  years  are  a 
long  visit. 

Balderston.  But  will  she  return  in  eight  hundred 
years? 

Moore.  As  likely  as  not,  for  the  coal  that  supplies  the 
railways  and  the  manufactories  in  England  will  be  ex- 
hausted in  another  hundred  years. 

Balderston.  Other  means  will  be  discovered — elec- 
tricity. 

Moore.  Why  so  pessimistic,  Balderston?  Now  it  is  I 
who  am  the  optimist,  finding  happiness  in  the  thought  that 
in  about  one  hundred  years  the  population  of  England  will 
begin  to  dwindle,  and  in  about  two  hundred  years  there 
will  be  fields  and  gardens  where  to-day  there  are  cinder 
heaps.  America  will  remain  longer  in  ugliness,  for  your 
coal  deposits  are  larger,  and  there  is  more  petrol.  But 
coal  and  petrol  are  not  endless  even  in  America;  and  as 
soon  as  both  are  among  the  gone,  the  world  will  start  on 
a  new  race  again:  the  pack  horse  will  be  seen  on  the  down; 
the  archer  will  be  met  in  the  forest  bending  his  bow  to 
catch  the  swift  deer  with  a  swifter  arrow  as  he  crosses  the 
glade;  women  will  come  back  to  the  cottage  doors  to  spin 
the  thread  for  the  weaving  of  the  sheets  they  lie  in; 
pottery  will  be  made  on  the  wheel;  and  men  will  paint 
it,  having  recovered  the  use  of  their  hands,  and  a  new 
idea  of  beauty  be  given  to  mankind. 


